Blue Ribbon Business Reporting

Ms. Lindablue F. Romero gets a Blue Ribbon for business reporting for her piece, “Businessmen tighten belt to cope with economic slump.” The article was a front page run in the Tribune’s November 4 edition. The piece, based on a survey of local business managers, takes a meaningful look at the statistics the survey generated.

Most reporting that is built on statistics misses one critical element–a logical presentation of the statistics themselves. It holds true in the Commonwealth; it holds just as true in the general U.S. media. The problem, of course, is that many reporters don’t have a grounding is basic statistics– they have a faint concept of what an “average” is, but beyond that, nothing.

Worse yet, many so-called statistical reporting is pure garbage. When you read something like “studies show that nine out of ten people _______ (fill in the blank),” you’re usually being sold a bill of goods. Such an article will ignore the statistics themselves (which probably don’t even exist in the first place), and merrily proceed on to some conclusion or another, which was, of course, a forgone conclusion, with that phony red-flag of “studies show” to lend some phony credibility to it. This is a favorite, low-rent hustle of the U.S. media.

Ms. Romero, by contrast, did the work to offer a meaningful overview of the relevant statistics, which were generated by a Chamber of Commerce survey of local companies.

The article lead: “Thirty-two percent of 71 companies surveyed by the Saipan Chamber of Commerce had cut back work hours to cope with the sharp decline in the island’s tourism economy.”

Note that the article doesn’t say that “32 percent of Saipan businesses cut back work hours,” which is what a lot of reporters would probably say. But that’s not the case here. Not all businesses were surveyed, so we can’t merely extrapolate the study results to the Commonwealth as a whole. The lead states the facts plainly, and doesn’t jump to any incorrect conclusions.

Then, this: “The 71 companies who responded to the survey represented 56 percent of the total Chamber membership,” is one observation. Good job–I now know how big the “sample size” was in comparison to the overall “population,”–the membership of the Chamber itself. The bigger this percentage is, the more faith we can place in the results.

Fifty-six percent is a pretty high percentage, so I know that this study is worth paying attention to.

I’ll spare you the rest of the details; they’re all clearly, throughly, and plainly stated in her article.

The Chamber deserves kudos for conducting such a logically put together study and for sharing its results with us. But I doubt the facts would have been transmitted to the community- at-large so effectively if a good piece of reporting didn’t convey the facts so clearly. The reporting in this case was better than most of the stuff you’d see in a lot of major U.S. newspapers with their mealy-mouthed and meaningless “studies show” phony baloney.

Good job, Ms. Romero. A good write on business statistics is a breath of fresh air in a world whipped with media hot air blustering about “studies” that they never bother to present in a credible way.