Musings from Brian J. Noggle: No Stunning Revelations on Grocery Store Checkout Scales, Either

No Stunning Revelations on Grocery Store Checkout Scales, Either

The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel gets its outrage on when it finds that sometimes complex weighing mechanisms falter and don't weigh precisely, and when these fail between inspections, they deliver faulty measurements to the benefit or detriment of consumers. But the Journal-Sentinel goes nuts on it since it can get a WATCHDOG REPORT out of a hot-button contemporary issue like gas:

When it comes to buying gas in Wisconsin, you don't always get what you pay for.

A Journal Sentinel

analysis of nearly 60,000 gas pump inspections shows that more than 2,000 pumps delivered a different amount of fuel than the meter registered in the past two years.

Yeah, well. That's about a 3.3% failure rate. Thanks, Journal-Sentinel, for your analysis that probably meant you read a department of weights and measures report.

The Journal-Sentinel piece is long on its own flabbergasted outrage, but doesn't really have anything but that. What's the solution? Twice a year inspections by the official standards keepers? Mandating the gas stations and their evil overlords Big Oil invent failure-proof pumps? No answer needed--only interviews with outraged consumers.

A more compelling story would be an indictment of how differences in air pressure and temperature affect the actual gas in a gallon. However, understanding Boyle's Law and explaining it to daily newspaper readers is beyond the ken of contemporary journalists; reading summary tables in government reports and conducting man-on-the-street interviews, however, remains in the sweet spot of the modern journalist skill set.

No word yet on whether Journal-Sentinel WATCHDOGS will figure out that most times when you buy meat at the grocery store, you're paying for the tray and the cellophane wrap if the meat clerk forgets to or out of haste omits to use the pricing scale's tare feature. But that's not an attack on BIG OIL, and those grocery stores still advertise with the local daily.

- posted by Brian J. @ 6:36 AM