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Letter from the Editor Dear Reader, Behold, the humble baseball box score.
To some, this piece of traditional sports lore is a dry series of statistics about a game that’s already over.
To me growing up – living out in the country, too young to drive and no cable TV to watch the Detroit Tigers – they were more than stats. Every data point in a box score is a part of a larger narrative, and it wasn’t hard for a bored boy to make an entire game story come alive out of that little piece of newsprint.
So I am the least surprised person to learn that MLive journalist Scott Levin kept scrapbooks of box scores as a youngster. And the millions of readers who have been consuming MLive’s coverage of the COVID pandemic can thank him for that obsessive devotion to data.
Levin is MLive’s data specialist, but he prefers to amend it to “data reporter.”
“In the same way a standard reporter would call someone and get some facts or some quotes out of them, I'm grabbing spreadsheets and interviewing the data to see what stands out,” he said.
Every day that he’s worked since the pandemic hit Michigan in March 2020, Levin has downloaded and parsed spreadsheets on all facets of the crisis – from initial infection rates, to hospitalizations and deaths, to the trends in vaccinations. Like the box scores from our youth, there are complete stories hidden in the columns of numbers.
All of those maps, and charts and graphics that MLive has published on a daily basis throughout the pandemic? That’s his work. All of the authoritative writing our public health reporters have produced on the toll of the virus, and now the progress of vaccinations? The factual foundation is data, and Levin is our guru.
“It gives you leads to follow on a thread, and maybe it goes nowhere,” Levin said. “But maybe you just tapped into something that even the people who put the data together didn't realize. And that, in a very geeky way, is a super exciting moment.”
Levin came to MLive in 2012 from The Anchorage Daily News in Alaska, where he was online editor. He started as a producer on our digital operations team, but his facility with data led us to create his current role in 2016.
He lives in Kalamazoo County, but his work supports journalists throughout MLive’s operations. Prior to COVID, a key part of Levin’s work was a feature co-authored with statewide reporter Julie Mack that we call Data Mine – weekly databases and reporting on school performance, property values, crime rates, etc.
“What's cool about them is that they're annual,” Levin said. “It tells the story of growth and progression and decline, and everything that we're all living through. These are topics that most people, at some point in their life, have experienced at a deeply personal level.”
There’s been a lot of talk in recent years about the nature of facts. People seem pretty dug in on their opinions, which they often morph into some version of “personal truths.” But just like a bar of soap by its nature cannot be dirty, a fact is granular truth. And a series of facts are an assembly kit for insights.
That said, any assembly kit needs instructions, and someone who knows what they’re doing with it.
“I think a lot of people think of a data specialist as someone just sifting through numbers, but Scott shows that it's so much more than that,” said Shannon Murphy, Levin’s editor and the leader of MLive’s Public Interest reporting team.
“A great example is the work he did on our mental health project in early 2020. We had a lot of essays from Michigan residents on how mental health impacts their lives, but Scott created something really beautiful that helped tell the story visually.”
Data sets are Levin’s medium, but his aim is telling illuminating stories. He is careful not to edit the data he gets, or manipulate it.
“I treat (data) like the end-all be-all – the truth, in whatever form, or whatever answer it can provide,” he said. “I just want to interpret for the masses in a quick way, what it says if I don't tinker with it or futz with it at all.”
The pandemic created a daily crush of uncertainties, and as well as a huge demand from readers for credible information in a nonstop breaking news dynamic. That elevated the need for what Levin does so well, as well as the value.
“The frequency and intensity has been about multiple 10,” he said. “It sounds corny, but I did feel like this moment in humanity was bigger than my job. … (That) the best thing to do was to make people feel a little bit more stable in an environment where we really didn't know anything.”
His output was critical not just to readers’ understanding of what was unfolding. Murphy relates one anecdote about how decision-makers were relying on his work.
“He had two days off one week, and we were unable to update our daily coronavirus charts and graphs,” she said. “I received a panicked email from a reader, someone who works with a tribal casino … since they used (the charts) each day to determine whether to open. It really spoke volumes to how important Scott's work is to the daily lives of Michiganders.”
Levin still has his scrapbooks of box scores, somewhere in a box in his basement. And he is still doing daily COVID-related charts and graphs, although the intensity of the pandemic thankfully appears to be waning. While demand for insights on the virus may lessen, our data-based reporting will remain a vital part of MLive’s news mix.
“The most positive thing that's come out of this whole year is, how important data visualization is,” Levin said. “I think it's become clear to all the reporters that it will add value to their story. And as long as I can keep existing in that world, I'm happy for as long as it takes.”
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🎧To listen to this week’s Behind the Headlines podcast, click here. To listen on Spotify, click here.
Editor's note: I value your feedback to my columns, story tips and your suggestions on how to improve our coverage. Let me know how MLive helps you, and how we can do better. Please feel free to reach out by emailing me at editor@mlive.com.
John Hiner Executive Editor Vice President of Content Mlive Media Group
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