Thursday, November 15, 2012

Jobs Story, With Fresh Jobs-Loss Data, Needs New Headline

[Thursday afternoon update: Ask and ye shall receive: 4:58 p.m., new headline: State lost 7,500 jobs in October]

Sometimes adding new material to the top of a story undermines an earlier headline. An editor should recast the headline, or drop the jobs'-loss info, which would make less sense.

Case in point, as the headline is based on information pushed to paragraph four:

At midyear, state had added 35,379 private-sector jobs


According to preliminary estimates that are prone to major revisions, Wisconsin lost 7,500 jobs in October, according to data released Thursday by the state Department of Workforce Development.

Compared to the previous month, the state lost an estimated 6,000 private-sector jobs and 1,500 jobs in the government sector, which includes federal, local and state-level employees, Thursday's numbers show.

The state's unemployment rate, however, improved: it fell to 6.9% in October from 7.3% in September....
The agency released the data about estimated job losses about an hour after it released a separate report that showed that Wisconsin added 35,379 private-sector jobs from June 2011 to June 2012.

No comments: