Author: hankkalet

Hank Kalet is a poet and freelance journalist. He is the economic needs reporter for NJ Spotlight, teaches journalism at Rutgers University and writing at Middlesex County College and Brookdale Community College. He writes a semi-monthly column for the Progressive Populist. He is a lifelong fan of the New York Mets and New York Knicks, drinks too much coffee and attends as many Bruce Springsteen concerts as his meager finances will allow. He lives in South Brunswick with his wife Annie.

Today’s question is about polling

Here is something I posted to Facebook the other day:

Post by Hank Kalet.

The point I was trying to make — and that folks like David Redlawsk and the Rutgers Eagleton polling team and Patrick Murray at Monmouth University can make a lot better than I can — is that we need more precise language to distinguish between the open-ended surveys much of the media run and the kind of scientific polling done by Eagleton, Monmouth and others. Granted, the pot survey being conducted by NJ.com is technically a poll, but it is not scientifically constructed (to account for demographics, for instance) and, even if there are mechanisms in place to prevent the gaming of the survey, it only records voluntary responses. These are valuable tools for online news services, but the potential conflation in the reader/users’ mind requires us to be more precise.

Enter the Greensboro News & Record. The paper has announced that it is renaming its online polling as a “Question of the Day,” with this explanation (thanks to Jim Romenesko’s blog):

We’ve changed the name to be less misleading to readers who might assume our polls are scientific. Please keep that in mind when you’re touting them on social media.

Other news outlets really should follow suit.

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Email me at grassroots at comcast dot net.

Christie review clears Christie

The Huffington Post sums up the impact of the release today by the Christie administration of its internal investigation into Bridgegate with a headline/photo package that proves, once again, that you do not need a lot of words to make your point:

The governor’s press release called it a “Comprehensive and Exhaustive Report” based on “More Than 70 Interviews And 250,000 Documents (were) Reviewed Over Two Months, The Internal Review” and a “Thorough Investigation.” (The capitalization is from the press release).

The co-chairs of the Legislative Select Committee on Investigation Co-Chairs — Assemblyman John Wisniewski and Senate Majority Leader Loretta Weinberg — offered a slightly different assessment. They said the Christie review “has deficiencies that raise questions about a lack of objectivity and thoroughness.”

Lawyers hired by and paid by the Christie administration itself to investigate the governor’s office who then say the governor and most of his office did nothing wrong will not be the final word on this matter.

The select committee will continue its work, the pair said, as will a team from the U.S. Attorney’s office.

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Jonathan Schell, a voice of reason and compasion

Jonathan Schell, the antiwar activist and journalist, has died from cancer.
Schell was an important, if too-often-ignored, voice against the excesses of American empire.
With a hatred of war shaped in part by his firsthand accounts of U.S. military operations in Vietnam, Schell wrote for decades about the consequences of violence — real and potential — with a rage and idealism that never seemed to wane.

Of course, that rage and idealism was never given a chance to wane as wars both large and small continued to leave millions dead, wounded or without homes.

Here is a column I wrote in 2008 — Dispatches: We should do as we say — based on an interview I did with Schell before he was scheduled to speak to the Coalition for Peace Action. (It is behind the pay-wall for archives at The Princeton Packet site — sorry.)

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Email me at grassroots at comcast dot net.