by R.P. Seawright, Above the Market
I occasionally write for outside publications. When those publications are digital iterations of traditional media outlets, their editors tend to be especially vigilant about keeping posts to 400-600 words (as compared with my 4,000 word monstrosity at The Big Picture today). Thatâs because their research says that few readers will go beyond that length, no matter how good the content (which is a real problem for me since I tend to favor and write long and fairly involved pieces). Accordingly, information can readily be provided. But meaning, which takes careful sifting and evaluation of evidence, must remain rare indeed.
For example, various governmental agencies regularly release trade balance data, information that routinely makes the news and engenders both comment and controversy. The data seems straightforward enough. However, Zachary Karabellâs new book, The Leading Indicators: A Short History of the Numbers That Rule Our World, uses the example of the iPhone to explain why the data itself is not as useful and probative on its face as weâd like to think. With an iPhoneâs component parts coming from at least 12 different countries and final assembly taking place in China, assigning value to various countries for trade balance analysis requires a careful parsing of the data. Yet the official trade balance figures follow specific international ârules of originâ protocols that assign fully $275 in value per phone to China even though only about $10 of true value per phone is provided there.
Thus the stardard issue trade balance numbers may mean a lot less than weâre prone to think. Accordingly, if such data is going to be substantively useful and meaningful (at least for more than an extremely rough outline), more than 600 words of analysis are going to be needed.
That said, the 600 word barrier itself may well be wildly optimistic. A survey by the American Press Institute found that roughly six in 10 Americans acknowledge that they do nothing more than read news headlines to get ânews.â They canât even be bothered with a measly 600 words (which most readers can complete in less than 3 minutes; this article comes in at 750 words by the way).
Even worse, our failure to read beyond the headlines doesnât stop us from sharing and commenting on the information we didnât read. NPRâs April Foolsâ Day joke/story entitled Why Doesnât America Read Anymore?, the link to which isnât a story at all, but rather a commentary about some peopleâs propensity to share and opine on NPR stories that they havenât actually read. The story went viral when pranksters in on the joke linked to the piece and others then argued that they do too read and indignantly shared the link with exhortations to âRead the story!â without actually having clicked on it (if they had they obviously would have realized that the whole thing was a prank).
Some commenters are at least honest enough (if still irony-challenged) to start their social media shares with âTL;DRâ â short for Too Long; Didnât Read. But they then proceed often to offer an opinion on the shared article anyway. As Tony Haile, the chief executive of the web traffic analytics company Chartbeat, recently put it (on Twitter, naturally): âWeâve found effectively no correlation between social shares and people actually reading.â According to Chartbeatâs Josh Schwartz, âWhen people land on a story, they very rarely make it all the way down the page. A lot of people donât even make it halfwayâ (see below).
Few people are reading all the way to the end of this or any other internet article and a surprisingly big number arenât reading at all. Moreover, articles that get a lot of social media shares donât necessarily get read very deeply and articles that get read deeply arenât necessarily generating lots of shares. If the most meagre bits of information arenât fully or adequately digested, true meaning becomes even rarer and more valuable.
I repeat it often and in a variety of forms and contexts. Information is cheap but meaning is expensive. The concept is on my masthead above. In this data-soaked age, itâs easy to claim that â[d]ata has become our currency.â But if weâre to avoid huge personal and professional understanding deficits, we need to recognize that our most valuable stock-in-trade isnât the data itself, easy though it is both to obtain and to misunderstand. Our currency should be and our edge should reside in being able to ascertain what these enormous piles of data actually mean. Such meaning is expensive and getting more so by the minute.
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