Every article should contain facts. The key to using facts is to carefully choose which facts you use and refrain from using too many of them. If you use too many facts, you will bore, confuse, or intimidate your readers and risk losing them forever. In most cases, your readers are in no way obligated to read your work; therefore, you should always strive to make your articles interesting and enjoyable.
If you were writing a profile on somebody and among his many pastimes he enjoys competitive feats of endurance, including Ironman Triathlons, marathons, and hiking, it would probably be silly to regurgitate too many facts with regard to any one of these pastimes. For example, if he told you that he hiked the Appalachian Trail as a teenager, it may be sufficient to mention that the Trail is about 2,180 miles long and spans fourteen states. Few readers want to know more (that there are more than 250 three-sided shelters along the trail, that there are 550 miles of trail in Virginia, or that you may encounter skunk cabbage among the flora). And if somebody were interested in learning more about the Appalachian Trail, it’s not your responsibility to teach them; they can seek out this information on their own.
Sometimes important facts are introduced with new terms or jargon that are specific to a certain field. Whenever you use a new vocabulary word to introduce a fact, define it.
For example, say you were writing an article on diabetes and decided to write the following sentences.
According to the CDC, in 2010, the prevalence of diagnosed diabetes was 6 percent of the United States population or 18.8 million people.
Without a doubt, “18.8 million” is a lot of people, but a casual reader may be unsure of exactly what this statistic means. She may also be unfamiliar with the term prevalence, an epidemiology term that refers to the total number of cases of a disease diagnosed within a given period of time. Or worse, a casual reader may confuse an unfamiliar term for another—in this case mistaking prevalence for incidence. (The term incidence refers to the number of new cases diagnosed within a period of time. For example, “In 2010, the incidence of diagnosed diabetes was 1.9 million people or 0.61 percent of the U.S. population.”) The preceding sentence would be best rewritten as follows.
According to the CDC, in 2010, the prevalence, or total number of Americans diagnosed with diabetes, was 8.3 percent of the U.S. population or 18.8 million people.
Finally, if, for whatever reason, you were going to mention prevalence once again in a different part of your article, it would be good to redefine it in case your reader has forgotten its meaning. Of note, if you mention prevalence several times and in close proximity, there’s no need to continually redefine it.
Readers like perspective, and, when possible, it’s a good idea to cite facts in terms that they can appreciate. For example, putting a number or statistic in perspective can help your reader relate to the gravity of your message.
Let’s once again consider diabetes. In 2010, 18.8 million Americans were diagnosed with the disease. But how many people is 18.8 million people? This number of people is about the population of Florida. If you want to impress your reader with the sheer number of people affected by diabetes, it may be wise to compare it with the population of Florida.
According to the CDC, in 2010 the prevalence, or total number of Americans diagnosed with diabetes, was 8.3 percent of the U.S. population or 18.8 million people. This number is roughly equal to the population of Florida.
Facts that involve money always seem to pique reader interest. When discussing money, it may also be a good idea to put the numbers into perspective. Consider the following example:
According to the CDC, in 2007, the total cost of diabetes within the United States was $218 billion. This amount represents more than three times Bill Gates’ 2011 net worth.
Everybody knows that Bill Gates is the richest man in the world. Presenting the cost of diabetes in terms of his wealth attaches meaning to the figure “$218 billion.”
The facts you choose to present in your article must serve a purpose. Oftentimes you’re presented with several facts and must choose the ones that will make the most sense to your reader. Facts often take the form of statistics, which are expressed as numbers and can support arguments or assertions. Although statistics can be manipulated in a variety of ways, they make for good factual support.
Let’s consider that you’re doing a piece on poverty in the United States and need factual support. You can surf on over to FedStats (www.fedstats.gov) looking for income statistics and choose to be redirected to the website for the United States Census Bureau. (The United States Census Bureau keeps tight tabs on income and poverty levels.)
When writing an article on poverty, it’s probably best to concern yourself with statistics that reinforce the purpose of your article: poverty. For example, in 2011, the number of families living in poverty (poverty is defined by the government as a family of four making less than $23,021 per year) was 9.5 million, which means that approximately 25 million people are living in poverty. To put this number in perspective, the population of Texas is about 25 million people.
A statistic such as the median household income, which is $50,054 per year, will be less useful to your readers, and it may confuse them to present a number that doesn’t sound “poor.”
Please note that although I briefly present statistics, a full examination of the topic and how it relates to journalism is well outside the scope of this book. If you are interested in learning more about statistics, I suggest that you read News & Numbers by Victor Cohn and Lewis Cope.
Alarmingly, in light of shrinking magazine and newspaper staff sizes and profit margins, many publications can no longer invest financially in rigorous fact-checking services. In other words, gone are the days when fact-checkers were routinely on staff. Thus, it becomes the writer’s responsibility to make sure the facts are correct and assure the editor that the tendered article is factually sound. To this end, it’s good to include a brief source list at the end of each article that cites primary sources, secondary sources, website addresses, times and dates of interviews, and names and contact information for interviewed sources. Although the source list need not be as rigorous as a bibliography or endnote entry, if need be it should contain enough information for the editor to access the sources easily.
A few stately publications such as The New Yorker, Smithsonian, and National Geographic still invest in fact-checkers. These publications often require the author to thoroughly annotate the article and embed sources of information within a draft of the article. This process can be time-consuming and tedious. Science writer Robert Irion, who has written for both National Geographic and Smithsonian, points out that an annotated version of a 2,000-word article can easily exceed 5,000 words.
“There are publications that employ fact-checkers …” says Irion. “The journalist is responsible for preparing a fully annotated manuscript which will give—either embedded within the text or in footnote style—a complete description of where every factual statement came from. … Whether it came from the original scientific literature, a paper, or a website … or from an interview on a given date … all of this needs to be annotated … and the fact-checker takes it from there. You provide the source list, phone numbers, and e-mail addresses, and that staff person will check all the factual statements in your story. Ideally this is the best way to do it because it removes this potential minefield of source review from the equation because the magazine itself is handling it. … But in this era of budgetary cuts, some of the fact-checkers are falling to the wayside. … Ultimately, you have to make sure—by whatever means necessary—that your text is fully accurate before it’s published.”
One final, pithy piece of advice: Assumption and presumption are the enemies of diligent fact-checking. Just because you think you know something doesn’t mean you’re correct. Every good writer is a bit obsessive when it comes to facts. Check everything!