Harper’s Index Celebrates 25 Years

This entry was posted by harry s truman on Thursday, February 19th, 2009 at 9:05 pm.

From the people who brought us the disturbing statistical Retrospective of the Bush Years: Harpers Magazine is celebrating the Harper’s Index’s 25th anniversary by putting its entire archive online—free and searchable.

For example, here are some the results for the word “newspapers:”

• Percentage of newspaper stories that quote an unnamed source: 33
• Average number of newspapers and magazines to which a Soviet family subscribes: 6
• To which an American family subscribes: 3.3
• Number of the 23 daily newspapers in New York City that are published in English: 10
• Percentage change, from 1987 to 1988, in the number of new AIDS cases: +8
• Percentage change, from 1987 to 1988, in the number of newspaper and magazine articles about AIDS: -36
• Percentage change since July 2008 in the number of U.S. newspaper articles each month using the word “recession”: +1,300
• Percentage of all articles about Muslims in national British newspapers in 2007 that were negative: 91
• Chances that a story in a British newspaper is a reprinted or rewritten press release: 3 in 5

[Harper's Index]