Welcome “La Vita Nòva”

Playing with the brand new “La Vita Nòva” iPad app, authored by very respectable publisher Il Sole 24 Ore, the italian equivalent of the Financial Times. The app comes with a fair dose of hype about how it will “make the readers new women and new men”. Really.

So I’m reading some of the articles, thinking “is this Wired or what ?”, despising the navigation, but liking the graphics and then I see this article:

Social gaming is old already

The copy tells us that growth was spectacular in 2010, 29% over the previous year, but that’s going to slow down in 2011 to 24%…but that’s not what I see in the chart. However I think there is an explanation: the chart is plotting “growth”, not “value” (despite what the subheading says) and the value label is added, maybe for clarification. Being counterintuitive, some intern weak on math desperate to close the piece on time looks at the chart and says “+24% should be going UP, not DOWN, must be -24%”.

So please, professional journalism, if you want to ride the wave of new media – and you should – don’t do so at the price of quality reporting and reliability.