Thread by @ty_olsen

1. Was reminded of this, and I can talk about this now, so a short thread on why media monopolies are bad, a shortage of journalists is problematic, and why Twitter can be good.
*This is about structures, not people. One episode
of journalism says nothing about individuals.

https://twitter.com/ty_olsen/status/1187767674031357952

2. @robyndoolittle's great 2017 unfounded series prompted Statistics Canada to begin reporting data on the rates at which sex assault complaints (and other crimes) were deemed "unfounded" by police departments. Those statistics began to be included in annual crime stats releases.

3. They show the rate at which a police department deems a report of sex assault to be "unfounded." They vary incredibly from one region to the other, suggesting one's likelihood of being believed is highly dependent on the police officer, and the agency they belong to.

4. Some time after the 2019 stats were released that July, I got curious and started checking the numbers for police agencies in my neck of the woods. They were... average. But I compared them to those in Kelowna, which were NOT average.

5. Kelowna had a rate of 40%, which was crazy. This was a story. But it wasn't my story. Not my area. So I passed the info along and... nothing happened. I don't think this was because of any bad intentions or lack of competence.

6. Most likely it was because a story can be hard to see, at its creation stages. It can be hard to spot the Story, if you weren't already aware of an issue like unfounded rates. And because every story is competing with another story for the time of a reporter.

7. There are structural challenges too (and this is a general observation and goes for *many* other stories). You don't just need just a reporter to deem it a good one. You often (not always) need something that can be ID'd as a good story by both a reporter and an editor.

8. I, no doubt, have missed or failed to spot a ton of good and important stories that have passed right in front of my eyes. So, again, no judgment.
In this case, I also slid these stats to at least one other prominent B.C. news organization, which also didn't follow up on them

9. I wasn't alone. There were other journalists within news organizations who thought they were important and tried to get them noticed internally. But, like me, they weren't the person tasked with covering this particular issue and they could only push so hard.

10. So, eventually, I just tweeted the numbers out. And when I did so, I think it was @ChrisWalkerCBC who took particular notice and started driving coverage. That coverage combined with activism, particularly from @pinklady_ktown, led to other good and important stories,

11. That, in turn, led to a national police review and re-opening of cases. There was a positive result - a review of how police handled sex assault cases in Kelowna.
globalnews.ca/news/6605931/k…

12. But this is worth considering, because the reason it's possible is because of the competition in the Kelowna news market, which has a daily newspaper, a community newspaper, TV coverage, and online news sites with large audiences in Castanet and InfoNews. And the CBC.

13. Some regions lack almost all of those. The Fraser Valley (for the moment) only has one of those groups. It means not only that there is less journalism, but there are fewer layers of reporters to stop newsworthy stories from falling between the cracks.

14. What's key, too, here is that our journalism organizations also not all be focused on the same type of thing. If they all are focused on fighting over the exact same types of stories, (or if they all employ journalists from the same backgrounds) then stories again get missed.

15/15. The Kelowna unfounded stats story isn't a failure. It's a success. But in its success, one can see how other stories across Canada get missed when things don't fall into place just right. We need to constantly be thinking of how to improve the good-story safety net.

Epilogue: This is how you find unfounded rates.
Go here: www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/daily-quoti…
Click on these places (hopefully they show in order)

If this doesn't work, DMs open.

OH. I forgot one other super-important thing: This escaped notice not only in Kelowna but across Canada b/c as data-poor as Canada is, we have even fewer reporters. They just don't have time to spot everything. Fewer eyes mean important stats escape notice and can't help anyone

I should mention that on this individual point, I could have probably done more myself before I tweeted the numbers out. I may have not called enough attention to them, internally, as I could have before putting the numbers out there for all to see.

https://twitter.com/ty_olsen/status/1363900554255036418