Entries from December 2010

Tuesday, December 7th, 2010

How much did it cost to hire Anni Dewani’s killer?

The price of a murder in South Africa is 5,000 rand (“about £460”), according to early reports, including the BBC. Oh no, it’s 15,000 rand (“about £1,400”). Again, according to the BBC, which quickly updated its story. It’ll be interesting to see if the 5,000 rand figure spreads through the internet, as aggregation does its […]

Tuesday, December 7th, 2010

When FOI requests are no substitute for real journalism

Here’s a great post on FleetStreetBlues about a Guardian story on the lack of ethnic minority representation at Oxford and Cambridge universities. Alongside the reported difficulty of black and minority ethnic students to gain admission to Oxford and Cambridge, the Guardian reported: “The FOI data also shows that of more than 1,500 academic and lab […]

Monday, December 6th, 2010

The power of infographics: 200 years of progress

Here’s a fascinating example of animated infographics. It’s a powerful visual representation in a few minutes of a complex and controversial story – the idea that, contrary to much of the media’s narrative about life in the modern world, things have gone quite well, all in all. Uncovering, understanding and representing data such as this […]

Wednesday, December 1st, 2010

Subbing tip #11: To err is human – but incorrect

Spotted everywhere, and now on the BBC, people going “err” when they want to indicate a certain uncertainty. This is odd – there’s a perfectly legitimate word for this, but it only has one “r”. Adding more because you think it makes it sound more hesitant has a certain logic, but is just plain wrong. […]