Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism fails students, public, and transit debate
In a standard "show both sides" article, UW journalism student Lexie Clinton went off the rails in fabricating the grounds for the skeptic's side in an article she wrote for the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism's "Is the State Ready for Rail?" project.
Writing about the proposed Madison-Milwaukee rail link, Clinton stated, "Nobody knows how many people would ride [it]" despite later mentioning DOT and WisDOT predictions of riderships from 188,000 per year (155,000 more from Madison to Chicago) to 900,000 by 2020. How these figures were computed and the source for the latter (WisDOT) figure is not clear in Clinton's article, but WCIJ explains it in a "correction" that was not made to Clinton's article itself but on a separate website:
A July 21 report from the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism incorrectly said that state officials haven’t estimated how many people would ride a proposed passenger rail line between Madison and Milwaukee. Actually, a 2008 report prepared for the state Department of Transportation estimated that 188,000 passengers a year would take the trip between the two cities by 2020. An additional 155,000 passengers would take the trip between Madison and Chicago. Total ridership on all or portions of the new route is estimated to be 900,000 passengers a year by 2020.
Unfortunately that's not the only disinformation in Clinton's article; she also took part of a sentence out of context from a federal report and radically altered its meaning.
Clinton refers to a “U.S. Government Accountability Office report that concluded rail projects would have ‘little impact on the congestion, environmental, energy and other issues that face the U.S. transportation system.’” In fact the summary of this very large (108 page) document reads:
Given the current fiscal crisis facing the nation and the pressing needs facing the federal government in many areas, it is critical that federal dollars are used efficiently and effectively and are focused where they can produce the greatest benefits. Failure to apply these principles could lead to an unfocused federal investment in high speed rail corridors or projects and, as a consequence, little impact on the congestion, environmental, energy, and other issues that face the U.S. transportation system. [Emphasis added to show the phrase that appears inside of WCIJ's reconstructed sentence.] GAO-09-317, p. 44.
The same report concludes:
High speed rail does not offer a quick or simple solution to relieving congestion on our nation’s highways and airways. High speed rail projects are costly, risky, take years to develop and build, and require substantial up-front public investment as well as potentially long-term operating subsidies. Yet the potential benefits of high speed rail—both to riders and nonriders—are many. Whether any of the nearly 50 current domestic high speed rail proposals (or any future domestic high speed rail proposal), may eventually be built will hinge on addressing the funding, public support, and other challenges facing these projects. Determining which, if any, proposed high speed rail projects should be built will require decision makers to be better able to determine a project’s economic viability.
It is not likely high speed rail projects will come to fruition without federal assistance. The PRIIA establishes a good framework for helping craft a federal role in high speed rail (which, to date, has been limited) to address these challenges. Given the complexity, high cost, and long development time for high speed rail projects, it will be critical to first determine how high speed rail fits into the national transportation system and establish a strategic vision and goals for such systems. This will establish the baseline for federal involvement. To maximize returns on federal investments, it will also be critical when reviewing grant applications under the PRIIA high speed rail provisions to clearly identify expected outcomes and to incorporate performance and accountability measures to ensure these outcomes are achieved. The failure to incorporate such measures is a common drawback of federal transportation programs. Finally, it will be incumbent upon the federal government to develop the guidelines, methods, and analytical tools to develop credible and reliable ridership, cost, and public benefit forecasts. Without such guidelines, methods, and tools, reliable determinations of economic viability will continue to be the exception rather than the norm, and the efficiency and effectiveness of any federal assistance to high speed rail could be jeopardized.
By leaving the uncorrected Clinton article online, WCIJ, Clinton, and the UW faculty responsible for overseeing its production are embarrassing themselves while advertising a complete failure of the standards they claim to uphold.
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Bill Sell's research
http://uppitywis.org/part-3-wc...their-hand
http://uppitywis.org/part-2-wc...ected-wcij
http://uppitywis.org/part-1-uw...bility-off
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No original research
Nobody did any "original research," it was just a matter of fact checking and noting an internal contradiction. Jay Warner, an engineering consultant in Racine, gently criticized Clinton's article and seems to have noted the problems with it first in a comment made on Sept. 6. Bill seems to have taken Warner's points and spread them over three different blog posts in a way that complicates the rather simple issue, makes wild accusations ("fraud"), and tries to impugn WPR by simple association since it is a "partner" of WCIJ. That's not necessary or credible, and I found it pointless to wade through Bill's material once I realized it had nothing more substantial to say than Warner. If Bill actually tipped off Warner, great, he noticed it first and spread the word. Unfortunately his methods are rather counterproductive.
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