Those crowd estimates should really count

WITH THE election behind us, we return to our regular Ombudsman programming. First up, a bit of unfinished business from the Red Sox victory parade.

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The Globe's story on the Oct. 30 parade reported (with attribution) the city's estimate that 3.2 million fans turned out, in line with what the mayor had predicted. The next day the Globe had a follow-up story airing skepticism about that figure, with one expert suggesting 2 million was more like it.

But, says reader Tim Hill, even that follow-up story didn't provide a solid number. "The Globe's coverage of the parade included lots of photos and lots of human interest, but not the single most important fact for the historical record."

Hill, a computer engineer from Wellesley Hills, was not the only reader to question the estimates, but he was the most thorough. "Consider a few simple calculations," he wrote:

"3.2 million people standing shoulder to shoulder along both sides of a 3-mile land route and along one side of a 4-mile water route would have to stand, on average, 120 deep (i.e., 120 people every 2 feet for 10 miles).

If 2.7 million people entered Boston and Cambridge in a four-hour period, they would have to enter at an average rate of 188 per second. (Each of the three major highways into the area can carry two or three cars a second, at most.)"

There's more but -- while some might argue with the assumptions -- you get the idea.

What number might be more accurate?

Using information from various sources, including the Globe's own story and photos, Hill concludes: "If the parade route frontage was 10 miles (52,800 feet) and the number of people per two feet of frontage, averaged over the entire 10 miles, was 20, then the crowd was 528,000."

Some Sox fans might say it doesn't matter whether the right number is 528,000 or 3.2 million or something in between, that it was the spirit of the celebration that counted. Others might say that the crowd count is irrelevant compared to the far more important electoral head-counts that figured into history last week.

But accuracy counts when you are a newspaper, even on little things. And the Red Sox victory story is one that will be handed down for generations; it should be told as it happened.

The Globe's second-day, more skeptical look at the original estimate was a good attempt to do that. And Metro Editor Carolyn Ryan rightly praises the overall reporting as "terrific."

But by the time the second day story was published, the 3.2 million number was already circulating, quickly and uncritically woven into the ongoing conversation in the city. It was too late to take it back.   Continued...