Well, gosh. From a Gelf Magazine interview with New York Times Styles reporter Warren St. John:
GM: Lately, the Times has taken a lot of flak about bogus trend reporting. What�s your reaction to that? Do you think any of your articles would fall into that category?
WSJ: I definitely hope not. I keep by my side at all times the GQ article that Daniel Radosh wrote back in 1998 called the Trendspotting Generation. It�s a great dissection of trend stories. I personally pride myself on never�if I can help it�never writing a story I can�t back up. I�m very skeptical of trend stories when I read them. I�m even more skeptical of wading into a trend story and coming up with the data I need to satisfy myself that something is happening. Sometimes I think the flaw of a lot of trend stories is simply overstating what they found. Sometimes people can find things that are interesting that aren�t really trends. And that�s OK. It doesn�t have to be a trend to be interesting to write about. It might be less significant and warrant A1 play less. But sometimes it just a question of dialing back the significance of what you�re saying your findings mean.
