Most media houses in #Bhutan are not participating in the big party

Many media houses in Bhutan have set up their own websites: BBS, Kuensel, Bhutan Today, Bhutan Observer, Business Bhutan, and The Bhutanese all run news websites (the last two, by the way, having the most user-friendly interfaces).

Obviously, media outlets want as much traffic as possible to their websites. This can be seen by the "visit our website" promotions in the local print and broadcast media. However, currently the private newspaper websites - as well as BBS - are missing out on millions of potential readers outside of Bhutan. Why? Two words: Google News. Launched exactly ten years ago, Google News aggregates news articles from more than 50,000 online sources, and automatically compiles a 'front page' every few minutes. Google News has become the de-facto news destination for millions of users around the world. Users visit Google News to check out the recent happenings around the world, then click on news articles which takes them to the source (the website of the media house that published the article).

Some staggering statistics: About 1,000,000,000 (one billion!) unique users visit Google News every week. And each month, indexed news websites receive more than 4 billion visits that originate from Google News, as well as from the automatic news links generated by Google Search.

Bhutan's private newspapers are currently not participating in this party. When you search for Bhutan on Google News, the only Bhutanese news source that currently comes up is Kuensel. The other websites - Business Bhutan, Bhutan Observer, BBS, etc. - are not showing any results. Why? They are not indexed by Google News.

The solution is quite simple. If you are the publisher or editor of a media house in Bhutan, read Getting into Google News, then fill the form. and expect a surge in international traffic. More information for publishers is available here.

Chart Crunch Continues: say goodbye to pie charts

The Bhutanese newspaper has been presenting front-page articles on the Rupee crunch, presenting different figures to tell a story. They are to be commended for using charts to present the data. Yet, there is much to be desired in terms of the choice of charts. Yesterday's front-page article "How private consumption and credit caused the Rupee crisis" featured the following chart for showing the different sources of private consumption Rupee usage:

From www.thebhutanese.bt (May 12, 2012 issue)

In an earlier post, we discussed why pie charts are ineffective for presenting data. We also showed that a bar chart is a much better tool for presenting counts and percentages. This particular pie chart suffers from an additional ailment: it uses 3D. In other words, instead of thin pizza slices we're looking at thick cake slices! While this might build up an appetite, note that the extra dimension does not represent any information. Even worse, it distorts our perception of size. You can see this by trying to figure out which consumption item contributes the most? While the purple slice in the front looks largest, it in fact represents the second largest item! (can you find the first?). If an important decision (such as a ban) would be made based on this misperception, it would be quite tragic.

Other questions are also difficult and time-consuming to answer with a pie chart. For example:

• Which consumption item contributes the least?
• How much does Transport contribute? How does this compare to Clothing & Footwear?

Now let's look at an effective chart for conveying the same information. It is not fancy or colorful, but it doesn't require much thinking as the facts just "pop out":

Sources of private consumption and credit

We see that the first two items are similar in their contributions and high compared to the others, then a drop to 10% for Clothing & Footwear, and lastly the other items contribute between 2%-6% each, with Alcoholic Beverages, Tobacco & Narcotics contributing the least.

The bottom line: forget pie charts and forget 3D. Counts and percentages are always best to convey with simple bar charts (you can find a few more examples on this page -- click on a pie chart to see a better bar chart alternative).

Using charts in the media is very important. It catches the reader's eye and can help summarize the story in one look ("a picture is worth a thousand words"). However, it is crucial that chart creators acquire the basic knowledge in creating effective charts. It's not rocket science, yet it makes a huge difference.

Telling a story effectively with charts

An article in this week's The Bhutanese showed data supporting "a study by the Bhutan Chamber of Commerce and Industry [which] shows that government expenditure and government projects are the main cause behind the rupee shortage." The following line graph was used to show the data (unfortunately, images are unavailable on the newspaper's website). The chart compares government spending with three other expenditures from (I think) 1995 to July 2011.

While a line graph is an effective way to compare trends, there are a few issues that must be kept in mind to avoid confusing the reader. Let's look at this chart carefully: First, the year labels are confusing. Second, are lines connecting annual numbers? monthly numbers? or perhaps some other aggregation? Third, the choice of line colors is quite hard to read, especially on the grey background. Try to follow the Rupee Reserves line. And fourth, the goal of a chart is to highlight the information for our story, not to dazzle us with color and bling. While the four lines and the legend are information, all those horizontal gridlines and background shading are distracting non-information.

These are just some guidelines for producing effective charts. Unfortunately, I do not have access to the data so I cannot produce an "improved" chart that more clearly communicates the message. Creating good charts is crucial for communicating news stories and convincing the audience. To learn more and improve your skills, you are welcome to join the Effective Data Presentation workshop.