We seem to have something of a fetish for lists that rank cities and states. That's why magazines like Men's Health run frequent articles listing the best and smallest, and most this and that places in the country. When you list lots of cities and states, you are sure to pull in readers (and maybe even subscribers!) who live there, and who will then talk about the list and promote your agazine.
One Men's Health study I came across today ranks Birmingham as 50th most connected (FaceBook pages, twitter accounts etc) city in the U.S. Who knew? It was the only Alabama city on the list of top 100.
Previously, Men's Health had ranked Birmingham 8th most religious city in the country (Montgomery ranked 12th), and Birmingham was also ranked 42nd for getting drunk, and 10th for obesity.
The magazine also ranked Birmingham as 8th in making charitable contributions...Montgomery ranked 34th on that list.Birmingham is also the 3rd mostly commonly mentioned city on this blog, and the 5th when it comes to pictures of the city being posted. No... those last two rankings are made up. And in a sense, so are the others.
The magazine writers depend on lists and stats from the Census Bureau and other sources and then take a leap of faith that one city is more religious than another because it has more churches and donors.
[The Monday Morning Media Memo is a regular feature of this blog.]
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