Reporting tips: Crime data, story ideas and understanding the difference in percentage and percentage-point changes

For The Journalist's Resource, Denise-Marie Ordway shares tips on clearly and accurately reporting on percentage changes in stories about government budgets, crime, health, polling, and so on. Ordway created the tip sheet with help from Jennifer LaFleur, a senior editor at The Center for Public Integrity and a pioneer of data journalism. The tip sheet goes beyond explaining when to use "percentage point" instead of "percent" and offers advice for explaining numerical changes to the general public. Sometimes, that means avoiding numbers!

Crime data may confuse: The FBI now bases its crime data based on its new National Incident-Based Reporting System, so some crime numbers may appear to have jumped when they haven't. Other issues include gaps in the data, old information, a narrow definition that doesn’t include crimes committed by law enforcement and a lack of oversight of crime data collection, says Kelly McBride of The Poynter Institute: “As a nation, we keep horrible, incomplete data that makes it impossible to get an accurate sense of the scope or impact of crime,” she writes. This can often lead to sensational coverage that focuses on splashy numbers without an appropriate context. 

The best leads for new story ideas come from allowing your mind to wander and revisiting your old articles, Jacob Granger writes for the Press Gazette in the U.K., citing instruction from Ellie Levenson, a freelance journalist, author and part-time lecturer at Goldsmiths College at the University of London.

"Levenson provides a formula: a feature idea = subject + angle + audience (and sometimes, but not always, a news hook). Picture a slot machine with three reels: subject, angle and audience. You can develop a brand new story just by spinning one of those. Change the subject: who else is doing this? Change the angle: what else does the subject do? How could they do it differently? Change the audience: what would another type of reader (younger, older, urban, expert, layperson etc.) want to know? You can hit a dead end, but this is also how you can produce multiple stories based on one lead. . . . But here is a catch: reporters often focus on what amuses or appeals to them. Do not write for yourself or your editor. Think about how stories impact your audience and keep your ego in check."