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Wednesday, January 07, 2009

gender difference in the bones

Well how old are they then? "Ancient"? Ya know, ancient. You can't have a news item headed: "Marlborough burial ground 'may be country's oldest'" and then fail to mention how old they are. There's no guide whatsoever apart from saying its ancient and early. Who does that?

My guess - a woman.

Symptoms/diagnosis

I've just seen a story that lacks the crucial and most obviously necessary data.
- There is a 90% chance you are reading a story by a female journalist.

There's no attempt in the article to provide an answer or explanation for what has happened.
- There is a 85% chance you are reading a story by a female journalist.

The author uses first person (I and Me and My) and never lets up, turning the assignment into a story about themselves.
- There is an 80% chance you are reading a story by a female journalist.

The author fails to put whatever has happened, or whatever things they are talking about into any meaningful context or perspective.
- There is an 70% chance you are reading a story by a female journalist.

Are all female journalists like this?
- No, of course not.

Are all male journalists unlike this?
- Pretty much, yes.

This is just a style issue isn't it?
- No, it impacts on substance. Every word in that word count taken up with shit is a net loss, and if crucial information is left out it is sometimes a waste of time to have ever started reading it. The value of the content is undermined. You have to be a good writer to pull off a personal pronoun-laced piece - you have to be very good, male or female - and most aren't. Maybe the senior staff and the editors are actually encouraging these changes - they certainly don't seem to be penalising it - I don't know.

Now it is a distantly remote possibility that maybe there are more female journalists at the inexperienced end than males and that maybe there are just as many males getting it wrong, but at lower total numbers, so that prejudiced males casually perusing news sites might draw conclusions that are false... but I don't think so. I think it's pretty obvious that women have different ways of telling a story than a man - different characteristics, different styles, different priorites etc.

Now it is also possible that the rise of blogging, the competitiveness of online media (and stagnantly low pay) has also lowered the bar somewhat in what is considered acceptable reporting. They may be getting no more than what they pay for.

So the main story seems to be from the Malborough Express' Claire Connell. Quoted in full:

Rangitane officially welcomed archaeologists on to the Wairau Bar with a powhiri as they prepare to excavate the site and return the contents of graves taken from the bar up to 70 years ago.

Three boats made several trips to ferry Rangitane kaumatua and iwi members, archaeologists and other officials to the Wairau Bar this morning for the powhiri under sunny skies.

Archaeologists from the University of Otago will begin a three-week excavation of the sacred Maori burial site on the north end of the site this afternoon. They will map and examine a two-hectare area where Rangitane tupuna (ancestors) once lay.
Fifteen archaeologists will camp on the bar in tents, alongside five Rangitane iwi members.

The excavation is needed before the contents of 44 graves, which were taken up to 70 years ago, are returned. Bones and artefacts were removed by Canterbury Museum for study and display purposes between 1938 and 1959.

According to archaeologists, the Wairau Bar is one of the most important sites in New Zealand because of the age and range of material found there. The tupuna provided the first conclusive evidence to scientists that New Zealand was originally settled from East Polynesia, they said.


Yeah, well when? Duh. You have precise data here: how many hectares the site is, how many graves, the exact years of the display, the numbers of personnel on the site etc. But no age.

Is it because it's not on Wikipedia? It can still be found easily enough by typing in maori bones "wairau bar" age into Google:

American Scientist:
The archaeological and ecological record spanning human arrival in East Polynesia is most detailed and densest in New Zealand. At A.D. 1285 to 1300, Wairau Bar on South Island is the oldest well-dated archaeological site in New Zealand. On that site Maori butchered more than 8,000 moas and consumed more than 2,000 moa eggs; in upper layers, there are huge numbers of seal bones, too. There are postholes from buildings, cutmarked moa bones and broken eggshells, stone tools, and burials of 37 individuals whose graves included such items as perforated moa eggs, real and imitation whale teeth, necklace reels, shark teeth, bird bone tubes and adzes. Moa eggshells placed as grave goods in human burials were dated by the radiocarbon method. Because of Wairau Bar, A.D. 1300 can be used as a dividing line between the time periods before and after proven human arrival.

Article Archives:
Wairau Bar is situated on a boulder bank at the mouth of the Wairau and Opawa Rivers [ILLUSTRATION FOR FIGURE 1 OMITTED]. Three discrete urupa (burial areas) and associated occupation areas have been located by archaeologists.
[...]
Conclusions

A new series of radiocarbon determinations enables the critical site of Wairau Bar to be brought into discussion about the early colonization of New Zealand. Determinations on moa eggshell from grave contexts and estuarine shell from occupation layers show that the site was occupied towards the end of the 13th century AD. The brevity of occupation is consistent with similar early sites which also disclose rapid depletion of local big-game resources. On that ground, these sites appear to represent the earliest phase of human settlement in New Zealand. In terms of material culture, they contain both the widest range and the greatest abundance of types which belong to Archaic East Polynesian culture, regarded as the colonizing culture of New Zealand.


Te Ara:
The Wairau Bar in Marlborough is one of the oldest known archaeological sites in New Zealand. Researchers Tom Higham, Atholl Anderson and Chris Jacomb, who have radiocarbon-dated it at 1288–1300

So, shall we say:
"maybe over 700 years old"
- is all we wanted in there. That's all. Apparently that's unimportant on a story about old things, archaeologists, excavations and so on.

20 Comments:

At 7/1/09 10:09 pm, Blogger Paul McBeth said...

Hi Tim, nice piece. As a baby reporter, I'm always interested in sloppy journalism. I was curious as to where you came up with the gender figures?
Cheerio,
PB.

 
At 7/1/09 11:42 pm, Blogger bry said...

Your argument is valid but your argument is not.

Firstly, the burial ground is stated as being the oldest in the country but you refer to the story failing to refer to the bones' age, which you say is all the more despicable due to the headline.

The I, me, my assertion seems a bit of a reach as there's no such claims in the story.

Your sexist "females write this way" bullshit is offensive and your symptoms/diagnosis routine is an insult to the medical profession (among others).

Still, it would have been nice know how old those bones were.

 
At 8/1/09 12:48 am, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Haha someone has trouble getting laid.

 
At 8/1/09 1:02 am, Blogger Paul said...

The main story does however link to this: http://www.wairaubar.com/,.

The RNZ article is pretty bad, 'bout as exciting as finding an expired bus ticket on the footpath and downright inaccurate.
The 'main article' however focuses on what happened/is happening, that is to say the news, not on how old the site is; which according to the article you dragged up was determined 15 YEARS AGO and so is rightly not the focus of the news.

Of course you could have pointed people to http://www.wairaubar.com/ instead of being sexist and angry, that would have made for some good journalism.

 
At 8/1/09 1:50 am, Anonymous Anonymous said...

I am disappointed to see sexist bullshit ranting like this on Tumeke.

Yes, the inclusion of the age of the bones would have been helpful, however, as Paul already pointed out this is actually not the focus of the story. In deeming this omission to be the result of the author's sex, and not simply one journalist failing to include a piece of information you personally consider vital, you have added 2 and 2 and made 9.

In doing so, you have undermined any point you may have been attempting to make about journalism standards, and have also managed to be totally offensive to 99% of people who will read this post (see, you are not the only one who can invent statistics!) Congratulations!

 
At 8/1/09 8:30 am, Anonymous Anonymous said...

It doesn't really matter if the writer of the story was a female does it?

Where are these figures from, you don't quote a source anywhere for your sexist claims.

Or was this some gross parody trying to make a... wait... well there is no point to bring gender into it. Journalists are journalists, no matter how good or useless they are.

Seriously WTF?

 
At 8/1/09 8:37 am, Blogger Laura McQuillan said...

I would have thought the evidence pointed to it being written by a male journalist because females are in the kitchen?

The original story came from The Press, and said the bones are 700 years old. This was omitted by RNZ.

You know, if it were a story about cooking or cross-stitch, women would get it spot-on.

 
At 8/1/09 9:08 am, Anonymous Anonymous said...

wow...

Was that piece designed just to get the blog into infamy or something?

I mean you quote statistics as if they were part of some sort of study SOMEBODY had run? But they were more full of shit than ANY missing info could ever be??

Which BTW someone has pointed out was not missing from the original article?

I assume this means that the editor responsible must have been a woman?

I am a guy BTW and I find this a little annoying. Us unpiggish guys are getting enough of a beat up from woman's reactionary movements without this sort of unfounded trash to be honest.

 
At 8/1/09 9:30 am, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Im a woman. How dare you.

 
At 8/1/09 10:20 am, Blogger Joe W said...

Khrist Tim, how old are you?

 
At 8/1/09 10:23 am, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Yup; two points; one by riot girl:

The original story came from The Press, and said the bones are 700 years old. This was omitted by RNZ

....and my second question; where do you get the statistics about women journalists?

The information was there in the original story, undermining your statement that women journos are mongs. Making clearly unsubstantiated claims, backed up with un-referenced (made up?) statistics, about shoddy journalism is, um...there's a word here...ahhhh, what is it...irony I think.

For the record I think most journalism in NZ is utterly appalling - unfounded emo drama. You can't tell me that's all about women journalists.

Has someone been into the wine? Just asking....

 
At 8/1/09 12:11 pm, Blogger Laura McQuillan said...

I'd like soup and a sandwich for lunch while you're in there.

 
At 8/1/09 12:14 pm, Blogger Tim Selwyn said...

Where are these figures from, you don't quote a source anywhere for your sexist claims.
&
I mean you quote statistics as if they were part of some sort of study SOMEBODY had run?
etc.
- That study begins now.

 
At 8/1/09 12:15 pm, Blogger Laura McQuillan said...

Sweet, well I'm a female journalist and my comments seem to make the most sense out of most people's, so how about using me as a case study to prove your theory wrong?

 
At 8/1/09 12:25 pm, Blogger Tim Selwyn said...

Three personal pronouns in one sentence.

 
At 8/1/09 12:28 pm, Blogger Laura McQuillan said...

That's because everything is always about me.

 
At 8/1/09 12:33 pm, Blogger Bomber said...

LOL

 
At 8/1/09 2:24 pm, Anonymous Anonymous said...

That study begins now.

Bit late of course, but I applaud your effort to back up your hypothesis with actual research of some sort.
I look forward to it.

 
At 9/1/09 12:51 am, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Excellent piece by Mr Selwyn; it puts into words thoughts I have had for ages...

 
At 9/1/09 12:39 pm, Anonymous Anonymous said...

And if the RNZ on-line article is but a precis of the actual story RNZ does during a bulletin?

 

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