The New York Times Saturday, September 5, Op-Ed features a piece by Charles M. Blow titled “The Prince of Dispassion.”  Among other things, it includes his opinion regarding a CBS News Poll about health care reform (press release PDF here). I found the data visualization used by The New York Times to be egregious. The data visualization’s rough measurements on the page was just under 11 inches high and approximately 3 1/2 inches wide. More simply, the data visualization is 66% of the space of the Op-Ed piece. That is huge. Below is the image that is available on the New York Times website.

Article Pie Chart

The CBS press release showed the data simply, clearly and without fanfare as a data table. As seen below, it is compact and easier to read.

Data Table from the CBS Health Care poll 9/1/2009

I would have preferred the Op-Ed piece to have had the original data table. This would have left a lot of room for Charles Blow to expand his commentary. Opinions in a newspaper are words and not huge charts. It would have been much better if the piece was 85% - 95% text and the rest supporitng tables or proper data visualizations.