AJC posts conservation article with a nice chart
The AJC has an article in today’s paper that discusses how much people have cut back to help conserve water in the metro area. It’s a pretty good article, looking at both conversation and current restrictions. The online version doesn’t include it, but there is a chart in the paper (page C8) which I’ve included a photo of. Does it look familiar?
I have two problems with their chart:
- It doesn’t include April data. It was easy enough to update this chart with data from April 1st, but for some reason they didn’t do that. March saw a pretty good rise in the lake level, and I’m guessing they felt that would hurt their story, so they left it out.
- They didn’t give us credit. We try to always give credit to our sources, but they didn’t feel the need to do that. Coincidence, you say? I don’t think so. Stacy Shelton, the author of the article, e-mailed me a few days ago and said “We loved your Lanier chart so much we stole the idea“. I assumed “stole” was being used playfully, but I was obviously wrong.
The data obviously isn’t mine (it comes from the USACE), and the AJC recreated the graph from scratch (adding an extra year to it), but it’s still pretty weak to blatantly copy an idea like that without a bit of credit.
This isn’t the first time I’ve been upset with the AJC. One of my first posts on this blog called into question some numbers that they apparently made up. Despite repeated e-mails to the author of that article and some other folks at the AJC, I never heard a word from them. I guess they were too embarrassed to admit their mistake.
April 6th, 2008 at 11:33 am
The level the AJC shows for March is too high. I think they put the April level in March.
April 6th, 2008 at 12:09 pm
Looking closer, I think I see what they did — they’re using the average elevation for each month, while I use the number from the first day of the month. That would explain their “higher than I used” number for March, and it also explains why they don’t have anything for April yet.
April 7th, 2008 at 12:34 pm
That takes some balls. I have no doubt that AJC has an internal watchdog group same as most big journalistic burocracies. You could complain. They should not be stealing work without credit.
April 8th, 2008 at 4:57 pm
Mickey,
It’s a pity they didn’t at least have the courtesy to acknowledge your page. I notice this kind of thing fairly often with corporations, they have no qualms about stealing work without credit, but boy watch out for their lawyers if you do it to them.
April 13th, 2008 at 6:55 pm
The AJC’s lack of acknowledgment of bloggers is done at their own peril. Everyone knows newspapers are in decline, while bloggers frequently link to papers. They don’t seem to understand the “hat tip” concept. Rather ironic, since many in the traditional media enjoy disparaging bloggers for uncivil or unethical behavior on line. Maybe they should look in the mirror before leveling those accusations.