Bloggers Up In Arms; Shelby Off the Air; And My Error of Omission
Ugh. What a busy day. Between responding to a raging on-line discussion about a forum on New Media Ethics (including the flattering commentary of Chuck Olsen where he called me “our generation’s Dave Moore”) and trying to get tonight’s Good Question on the air, I haven’t had a second to breathe!A couple notes. Don Shelby’s been off the air for a couple nights, he explains a bit about it when he called into his own radio show today. I’ll be filling in on WCCO from 3-6 p.m. Wednesday, so listen in. We’ll take calls.
In today’s Good Question video e-mail, I take you into our Good Question morning meeting. I failed to convey the reality that we sort through 60-80 e-mails every day, to help us decide what we cover. I believe tomorrow we’re doing one of your Good Questions. Some of the questions come from inside the newsroom, some come from outside. I’m interested in upping the amount of questions that come from outside… so I’ll keep pushing for that! (As long as you keep sending in good questions.)
And many of you e-mailed in response to last night’s story on men versus women drivers. The point was repeatedly raised that men drive more, and so it follows that men get in more crashes. This is true. However, according to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, men die in fatal crashes at a rate of 2.5/100,000,000 miles driven; Females die at 1.7/100,000,000 miles driven. So when you strip out the differences in miles driven, men do die more often in crashes. It’s just not as dramatic as the numbers I used seemed to suggest. Of course, in the story, I thought we made it clear that there is no great answer to the question, as it’s hard to really isolate the issue to a male/female variable.
But for some of you, I missed the mark, and I certainly should have used the deaths per hundred-million miles stat, so sorry about that. And thanks for writing to share your thoughts. Oh, and “Why are your stories always so thin in factual information?” is not going to make air as a Good Question segment, but thanks for trying.