This is a story about lists. Part of it, frankly, is a list.
It’s the kind of list, er, story that you’ve likely become familiar with in the age of sharing – via the Internet, through journalism portals ranging from Forbes to Weld, and through social media like blogs, and Facebook, and Twitter. Generated by think tanks and groups of self-proclaimed “experts” and then publicized by writers, or generated by writers looking to fill space quickly, lists have become a regular thing.
They even have a name for this kind of thing: the “listicle” which is, according to Wikipedia, a portmanteau of “list” and “article” or maybe is meant to evoke the word “popsicle,” and to emphasize, “the fun but ‘not too nutritious nature’ of the listicle.”
That last bit is according to Arika Okrent, Ph.D., who wrote the article “The listicle as literary form,” for the University of Chicago Magazine. Scholars, therefore, have helped make listicles a thing.
This particular thing affects Alabama, and Birmingham, particularly when the state and city are mentioned in some ranked list or other. For example, the experts at WalletHub publish lots of lists, some of them including the Magic City and Alabama the Beautiful. Case in point, WalletHub on Tuesday May 5 released “2015’s Best and Worst States for Nurses.”
Here is the reason why: “With National Nurses Week kicking off May 6 and the nursing industry expected to grow faster than any other occupation through 2022, the leading personal finance social network WalletHub conducted an in-depth analysis of 2015’s Best & Worst States for Nurses.
“In order to help newly minted nurses find the best markets for their profession, WalletHub analyzed the attractiveness of each of the 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia across 15 key metrics. Our data set includes such metrics as the monthly median starting salary for nurses, the number of health care facilities per capita and nursing job openings per capita.”
Alabama ranked 9th worst on the WalletHub list, coming in at number 43 after the experts “analyzed the attractiveness,” and determined that in the “key metrics” the state didn’t look so beautiful (see chart).
The lists do offer points of comparison. The best state for nurses, according to WalletHub’s “15 key metrics”? Washington. The worst? Louisiana, which is just slightly better, according to the experts at WalletHub, than Hawaii.
Will the WalletHub ranking “help newly minted nurses” decide whether to live and work in Alabama? Perhaps. Perhaps not. But one thing is certain: lots of people will see it. These studies get shared thousands of times through social media. Although the press release about this particular study appeared Tuesday, the nurse ranking, according to the WalletHub site, had already been shared more than 7,000 times through Facebook, Twitter, Linked In and email.
It may not be surprising, then, that listicles are popular, can be found anywhere, online, in print – David Letterman’s Top Ten Lists – and cover as wide a range of topics as there are topics to cover. But do they matter? And when the lists are ranked, does it matter where you find yourself on the list?
Listicle drama
“I have always appreciated them, both as a writer and a reader,” said Jennifer McKenzie Frazier, a veteran freelance writer, who has worked as a travel editor for Southern Living magazine. “I find it’s a quick way to get an answer that could have required a lengthy read that I just don’t have time for.
“Now, that said, there are times that I find them thrown together, if not flat out wrong, because they don’t require the in-depth reporting that a lengthy piece would take. Take Top 10 Burgers in Dallas. Someone could hop on Zagat and throw together their own piece/listicle without actually eating at all spots, if that makes sense. Another thing to add, I am highly skeptical of the restaurant, attraction and hotel lists, for obvious reasons of having done that for so long.”
On the other hand, Frazier is also a mother, and said that listicles around parenting topics strike her differently than those on travel. “I find them often to be the most helpful and well-researched,” she said. “Perhaps because they are written by parents who have heart thrown in the writing. My daughter has ADD and there is an ADD magazine and many sites on Facebook for learning disabilities. I even sent one article to my girl’s teacher, which allowed for the use of balls for my 3rd grader to sit on in class- a practice never done at our public school. So, in this case, they can be extremely helpful and even can back up a point you are trying to make on your own.”
Do rankings affect how people view where they live or work? For some people, the answer is definitely, “yes.” How they rank matters. And that can be particularly true in a town that wears its heart on its sleeve.
“Birmingham and Alabama natives have an attitude of never being good enough in the perspective of outsiders. They feel their assets are underappreciated. The retelling of Civil Rights struggle here, lists that out us toward the bottom, and advances in sister cities, such as Atlanta and Chattanooga, leave natives with a need to defend, explain or excuse our home city and state,” said communications specialist Tina Miller Tidmore, the president of Alabama Media Professionals. “The Jefferson County bankruptcy and overall bias against southern culture and its people just add to that. It holds us back from declaring with pride where we are from.”
Considered from that perspective, rankings can say as much about what outsiders think of Birmingham as they do about what Birminghamians think — about what the outsiders think.
“It’s embarrassing when Alabama ranks poorly on a national ranking of some sort,” said magazine writer and author Nancy Dorman Hickson. “I know there are many good things about and many great people in the state and wish there were more listicles showing that positive spin.”
Writer and entrepreneur Andria Hurst takes bad rankings personally. “I panic, then get a hopeless feeling,” she said. “I can’t do anything about it.”
Others see in rankings and listings, an opportunity. Another case in point: Also on Tuesday, the following email arrived from a local company, Alabama Outdoors.
“This week Birmingham is going head to head with Beaufort, South Carolina in the Outside Magazine Best Town 2015 competition, a bracket-style elimination for the best town in the country. As the chosen retailer for the region, it is our job to spread the word to get the city to vote early and often.
“With your help voting daily and sharing the link on social media to help us spread the word of Birmingham as the Best Town 2015, we could win!”
For Milan Ballard, the marketing assistant who wrote the Alabama Outdoors email, having Birmingham rank high in a well-publicized list would be cool. “It does matter to me, more from a personal standpoint,” she said. Having lived in the Birmingham area her entire life – dad from Mountain Brook, mom from Birmingham, proper – winning the Outside magazine competition would let people “see how things have changed,” she said.
“I would like people to see what Birmingham has to offer. I would, like, just be happy if people could see that Birmingham is a fun, cool place, and not just a flyover place like some people think it is.”
Still others say that whether a list affects them at all depends on the nature of the list. “It depends on where they got the source,” said Janina Larsen, who is, among other things, a pottery artist. “Is it true fact or opinions? Too many people putting in their two cents are quoted as fact. So to me it just depends,” she said.
“We live in a marketing world where news is generated to gain viewership, rankings, ratings, market share, etc.,” said Steve Prettyman, who currently works as a real estate investor. “Some listicles can give a false sense of superiority to some while negatively depressing others. As individuals we must look beyond media generated information and focus on personal issues that can help us progress and develop into better citizens and responsible adults.”
Making the listicle, checking it twice
The fact is that whether Birmingham, or Alabama, or any given location makes a list – either good or bad – is sometimes largely dependent on who is making the list.
Birmingham did not make the top 10 smartest or least smart cities in a MarketWatch survey. The Magic City also did not rank in the top 50 green cities in the U.S. according to Popular Science. That may or may not bother you, depending on whether you think you or those you know are smart or green, but what about something that matters at least a little to everybody – food?
A perennially hot local topic, there are lots of lists ranking cities for their culinary excellence. Birminghamians are known for taking pride in the frequency with which locals Frank Stitt, Chris Hastings and others are listed among the celebrated chefs of the nation. Still, depending on who is doing the ranking, this former steel town doesn’t always make the cut.
Birmingham didn’t make Travel and Leisure magazine’s list of “America’s Best Cities for Foodies,” but it did make Deep South magazine’s list of “8 of the South’s Best Foodie Cities,” and Chef Lee Richardson’s list of “Top 10 Southern Cities for Food” on bourbonandboots.com, in which the Magic City was ranked number 9 – just ahead of Miami at number 10, and behind Memphis at number 8. “Best Southern Food in the U.S.,” in which celebrity food show host Andrew Zimmern created a short list of favorites – Charleston and New Orleans—did give a sort of honorable mention to Birmingham, Savannah, Nashville, and Jackson, Mississippi.
Whether your favorite location makes the list also depends on what criteria the list makers use – how they frame the questions – or both. WalletHub lists, for instance, sometimes include this locale and sometimes don’t.
Recently, for instance, WalletHub reported that “Alabama is the 4th worst state for working moms.” But WalletHub studies on “best and worst states for an active lifestyle,” “best and worst cities for families,” and “best and worst cities for staycations” don’t list either this state or its largest city.
On the other hand, Forbes, reporting a list of “Best Cities for Working Parents” created by the personal finance site NerdWallet and Business Insider, listed Birmingham as 57 out of 100 locations. Forbes said that “NerdWallet took four factors into account: Cost of living in that city, cost of child care, quality of available education, and the percentage of households with children.”
If the topics of WalletHub’s best and worst for families and best and worst for working moms seem collectively similar in theme to Forbes’ best and worst for working parents, the different outcomes of their studies may point to how much depends on exactly what factors are taken into consideration.
It is also true that sometimes the rankings depend on how the facts are collected. WalletHub – they do a lot of lists, in case you missed that – ranks Birmingham as 69th in the list of “Cities with the Best and Worst Weather” but lists Hoover separately as 38th on the same list; whereas lists based on Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSAs) link the two cities together.
Consider “State of the Air” by the American Lung Association. In 2013 the organization ranked 277 metro areas. The Birmingham-Hoover MSA was ranked 14th worst for ozone (between Modesto, California and the MSA including Cincinnati); 24th worst for year round particle pollution, and 92nd for 24-hour particle pollution out of 277 metropolitan areas. On the report card associated with the study, this metro area got an “F” in ozone, a “B” in 24-hour particle pollution, but a passing score on the annual particle pollution rankings. “If you live in Jefferson County, the air you breathe may put your health at risk,” the report says.
That particular ranking could be presented as a listicle, but there’s no denying the seriousness of the underlying report. The same is true of rankings like “The Best And Worst States To Make A Living In 2014,” compiled by MoneyRates.com from data taken from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the Gallup-Healthways Well-being Index and C2ER and reported by Forbes. In that ranking, Alabama was listed as the 7th worst state to make a living based on average salary, cost of living, employment rate, and workplace conditions.
Compare that to something like People magazine’s “Top 25 Celebrity Hot List” and it becomes apparent that not all listicles are created equal.
What’s wrong with listicles?
Some see the lists, particularly those featured as multi-page rankings on websites – as clickbait.
“The metrics often drive me nuts – sometimes they are opinion based lists, sometimes they are based on selective data,” said Scott Hanley, station manager at WBHM, Birmingham’s National Public Radio affiliate. “Most often, they are ways to get you to click on as many ‘next’ tabs as possible – and mistakenly click on things that look like tabs, but are not.”
Dorman Hickson gravitates toward listicles that represent something deeper than just a list. “As a reader and writer, I appreciate lists that show the journalist worked to compile them,” she said. “They save time, especially when it comes to useful information. Conversely, I am an avid reader and thus more tolerant than a great many people of long, in-depth articles that take more time to grasp. I am the proverbial cereal box reader–I’ll read anything and often lug around a tree-killing heavy book as my entertainment.”
These days, though, many people are opting out of anything too heavy, too wordy, or too challenging to read, and the listicle plays right into that cultural shift, according to the Guardian’s Steven Poole in his own listicle: “Top nine things you need to know about ‘listicles’.”
“Psychologically, the listicle is seductive because it promises upfront to condense any subject into a manageable number of discrete facts or at least factoids,” he said. Then Poole explains why reading regular journalism or regular literature is taking a back seat to the list. “When you embark on reading an ordinary article, you have no way of knowing how many things it will tell you. Maybe 15, maybe two. Frustrating. Plus, if you’re reading online and it’s more than a single screen long, you can’t be sure when it’s going to end. A listicle keeps helpfully informing you how much of it there is left. Great! You’ve now read three out of nine! Keep going!”
That, by the way, was the third bullet point on his list. In number 6, he notes that Homer’s listicle of ships in the Illiad would be improved with warning copy about the kind of list it comprises, and in number 6, Poole notes that listicles are really good for you, intellectually speaking:
“A listicle is easier to read than an article; or at least, it’s easier to read some of and then stop, without feeling any guilt about having not accompanied the writer to the end of her thesis – because there is no thesis,” Poole says. “Listicles are thus perfect for skimming at bus stops. They are, essentially, themed compendia of micro-articles, each one self-contained. I suggest that we call each part of a listicle a particle. Generally, you will miss nothing by failing to read the last particle of a listicle. This listicle, of course, is a notable exception.”
Here to stay
Lists, as a literary tradition do have a long and storied history – the Ten Commandments, some have noted, is a top ten list – and people in the 21st century seem to gravitate toward listings of all sorts. Here are three reasons why:
One: Listicles are easy to understand
“I think the editors figured out a while back that numbers draw their audience’s attention,” said Brooke Baron, a Birmingham native now living in California. “In the case of ranked lists, people always want to read and share that info if their city/state/idea is number 1. When it’s a number like “Ten ways to beat writer’s block,” it makes people with writer’s block think, “Surely there’s something here I haven’t tried yet.” When it’s ONE thing, like “The single most important thing to help your baby sleep,” then people think, ‘Geez, it’s just ‘one’ thing… I can do that.’”
Two: Listicles are easy to write
“I’ll let you into a secret,” Steven Poole wrote. “A listicle is much easier to write than a regular article. I just have to think of each bit, and am blessedly free of the obligations to a) arrange them in a convincing sequence and b) deploy all the logical glue that sticks them together…. It’s very relaxing.”
Three: Listicles work
No matter whether you like the way your town, state, or football team is ranked, you keep looking at the lists. Why? According to a 2013 article in The New Yorker by Maria Konnikova (author of Mastermind: How to Think Like Sherlock Holmes), our minds crave lists. “In the current media environment, a list is perfectly designed for our brain,” she wrote. “We are drawn to it intuitively, we process it more efficiently, and we retain it with little effort. Faced with a detailed discussion of policies toward China or five insane buildings under construction in Shanghai, we tend to choose the latter bite-sized option, even when we know we will not be entirely satisfied by it.”