Aug. 21, 2023: The best thing I've read this week

Better stories out there? Perhaps. More entertaining? Sure. But when it comes to identifying a problem, digging into the data and putting it out there for an audience to understand, this piece by a team of reporters and designers at the New York Times is, without question, the best thing I've read this week. 

Damn, I love it when journalism does exactly this. 

We've heard stories of airplanes nearly crashing on runways. If you watch the evening news on TV, you've probably heard some dramatic audio clips of air-traffic controllers and pilots freaking out over oncoming planes. But we haven't gotten to the "how often, or the "why" and "how."

And, why haven't we gotten those answers? Well, the honest answer is that it is HARD to get at those answers. 

How hard you may wonder? 

Read the article! It says the Times' team analyzed "internal FAA records, as well as thousands of pages of federal safety reports and interviews with more than 50 current and former pilots, air traffic controllers and federal officials." 

That is a lot of work. 

And it's worth reading it -- to learn why, to understand how to fix it and, geez, how about just to give these journalists the pat on the back?

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