First off, apologies to all those likely offended last week by my references to an outrageous photograph of herself that Kim Kardashian sent out through Twitter. Possibly three groups of offended exist: 1) Those who have never heard of KK and feel uncool by this ignorance; 2) Those who feel KK is an egregious, materialistic, crass, egomaniacal self-promoter who insults all women with her willingness to achieve fame through bodily exposure; 3) Those who wanted to see the picture and are furious I didn’t include it.
For Group #1) Don’t worry. You’re not missing anything. For Group #2: I understand your point, but I am loath to ignore pop culture here and please do not see my references as endorsements. For Group #3: I have included the pic at the bottom of this post.
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Worrisome drop in grain prices
Prices had been softening for most of the previous month, but heading into the Labour Day long weekend, the price drops were startling.
Now, what the heck and I supposed to be blogging about? Oh yeah! How much fun statistics are in ag journalism!
Actually, stats are headache-inducing monstrosities that cause much pain to reporters, graphics editors and readers. They can be vitally important, but how the heck do you make them tell the story they’re trying to tell in a way a reader with 3.48 seconds to spare will be able to understand?
Right now I have a headache, and I assume my graphics editor Michelle does too, after spending some time trying to melt down a series of numbers from the recent USDA World Agricultural Supply and Demand Estimates report of January 12 into a single graphic that will work for the paper. We’ve been smacking our heads against three sets of numbers – world usage of wheat for the past three crop years, world ending stocks of wheat for the past three years, and China and India’s share of those ending stocks for the past three years.
Dear reader, you probably don’t realize the excruciating difficulties this causes for a numerophobe like me. Hence my pounding skull. My graphics editor sounds merely annoyed, but then she’s good at thinking like this, about images and stuff. Me, I have trouble thinking beyond words. There are complexities of representation and simplification here that would choke a crude oil pipeline. There are debates about numbers versus bars, and about whether lines would work better than bars, and about whether to use two axes rather than just one, and about how to highlight the trends in the numbers without misrepresenting reality.
And how to do this all, for all three measures, in a single graphic that will be two inches wide.
If we have any luck, and we seem to be coming closer to something that makes the point right, that’s accurate, and that is two inches wide, you’ll see a graphic in three days time that illustrates this point: world wheat stocks are relatively flat for the past three years, but world wheat consumption has been steadily rising, and because China and India have 40-some percent of the stocks and aren’t likely to export, we’re not as flush with wheat as a simple reading of ending stocks might suggest.
I guess I could have just written that in the story, and thrown in a couple of numbers, but then no one would have read the story. And no one would have gotten the point. And that would be a tragedy.
Well, there you have it: a little bit about newspaper production you probably have never thought about, and probably won’t want to think about again.
So, with that I’ll tie this up and say farewell for another day.
Wait – I almost forgot to include that KK Twitter picture that I didn’t include last week. I suggest those of a Victorian temperament not scroll down any further, because it is rather crass. (Note to Kim: you’re obviously staying trim by going to the gym, but you’ve gotta do something about that face. YECH! I suggest botox. That’s what I do and I’ve never been hotter than I am right now!)
OUTRAGEOUS PHOTO WARNING: DO NOT LOOK BENEATH THIS LINE IF YOU DON’T WANT TO BE APPALLED
