St. Pete looking for a certain type of Final Four audience...

http://www.tampabay.com/news/business/economicdevelopment/article436883.ece

Gotta wonder how many letters they'll get from this, pro and con.

 

Functioning link here.

http://www.tampabay.com/news/business/economicdevelopment/article436883.ece

From a strictly journalism perspective, I think mentioning the percentages that were quoted is a bad idea, simply because there is no way to verify the claim. (Well there is one way, but I wouldn't want to be the Poynter intern who had to poll the arena.)

 

The one quote from the woman saying that 75 percent were gay and 25 percent were in the closet definitely should not have run. You have parents and relatives of players watching the games, along with little kids. How does she know that they are all gay?

 

Doesn't matter if it's true. It's a fantastic quote.

 

What was he supposed to do, put in parentheses afterward ("actually, surveys show that only 57 percent of fans at last year's final four were gay")?

I thought it was a good story.

 

Wait, are you telling me that most of women's basketball fans are gay?

 

Simple: Don't use the quote. What if it were: "75 percent of black men openly slurp down watermelon and Thunderbird, and the other 25 percent do it privately."? Or any such similar permutation. It was a stereotyping remark that had no probative value.

 

There's no way 75 percent of black men slurp down watermelon and Thunderbird. At least not at the same time. That's just wrong.

 

All-you-can-eat fish?

 

Out of line.

Anyhow, the fan base is either gay or senior citizens. Was down at a final 4 a couple of years ago, it was all lesbian women. Kind of weird.

 

This one crosses a line, obviously. But, we use quotes filled with hyperbole all the time. Making "probative value" a threshold would eliminated 91.3% of quotes and statistics...including that one.

 

And includng your post, obviously, which was probably part of your point. The thing is, using specific numbers like that is a mile different than using a quote like, "Darn near all of them are gay, and the one who aren't are closeted." That's hyperbolic, and doesn't state specific percentages that can be mistakenly interprepted as fact be a harried reader.