[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 152 (Wednesday, September 27, 1995)]
[Senate]
[Pages S14429-S14430]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                              OUT OF PRINT

 Mr. SIMON. Mr. President, recently, Bob Samuelson had a column 
in the Washington Post on the scarcity of various Government statistics 
in printed form.
  Mr. Samuelson wrote that some of the reports published by the Census 
Bureau are going out of print. He cited the fact that the Census Bureau 
issued only 635 printed reports in 1994 as opposed to over 1,000 the 
Bureau printed in 1992.
  His concern over the scarcity of printed statistics led him to 
contact the Census Bureau. Mr. Samuelson learned that the Census Bureau 
is still researching and compiling all of the same data and information 
it has in the past. Only now, rather than publishing its reports in 
printed form, the Census is circulating statistics on the Internet.
  Lately there has been a great deal of attention surrounding the 
Internet and the information superhighway.
  I have to confess that my knowledge of the Internet is limited. 
Although, I do understand that a large and varied amount of information 
may be accessed by using the system.
  I join Mr. Samuelson in his concern that those who do not have access 
to the Internet, or choose not to use the information superhighway, 
will not have the same access to the vital statistics published by the 
Census Bureau that they have had in the past.
  While I do not dispute the benefits that accompany the Internet and 
other similar technological advances--especially in the field of 
education--I am concerned that we might overlook the usefulness and 
practicality of printed materials in the name of progress.
  Having access to a wide range of information at our fingertips is 
definitely an advantage of the Internet. We must be mindful, however, 
that there is no substitute for the printed word.
  Mr. President, I ask that Robert Samuelson's column entitled ``Out of 
Print'' be printed in the Record at this point.
  The column follows:

                       [From the Washington Post]

                              Out of Print

                        (By Robert J. Samuelson)

       My name is Robert, and I am a numbers junkie. I 
     compulsively scour the Statistical Abstract for intriguing 
     indicators of our national condition--the fact, for example, 
     that state lotteries collect $25 billion annually. Naturally, 
     I am also a big fan of the Census Bureau, which publishes the 
     abstract and conducts surveys on everything from our incomes 
     to our housing patterns. So it pains me to report that Census 
     is now committing a colossal blunder. It is slowly going out 
     of print. Literally.
       The Statistical Abstract momentarily seems safe, but scores 
     of other printed reports are simply being eliminated. In 1992 
     Census issued 1,035 reports; last year the number was 635, 
     and the retreat from print has only begun. Gone are, among 
     others: ``Earnings by Occupation and Education,'' ``Poverty 
     Areas in the United States'' and ``Language Use in the United 
     States.'' This is absurd. We go to great trouble to collect 
     this information, and now Census is suppressing it.
       The losers are not just statistics addicts. Our public 
     conversations depend heavily on these dry numbers. The shape 
     our concept of who we are, of how society is performing and 
     of what government should or shouldn't do. Political speeches 
     routinely spit out statistics that can be made to tell 
     stories: some true, some not so true. Keeping the 
     conversations honest requires that the basic data be easily 
     accessible to anyone who wants them.
       When I say Census is ``suppressing,'' I don't mean that 
     it's deliberately hiding its surveys. As a reporter, I've 
     asked Census for information hundreds of times; I can't 
     recall an instance when answers, when available, weren't 
     provided quickly. The culture of the place is to release 
     information. By its lights, 

[[Page S 14430]]
     Census isn't abandoning print so much as it's shifting its data to the 
     Information Superhighway. Statistics are being distributed by 
     CD-ROMs and the Internet. Already, Census brags that its 
     World Wide Web site is receiving 50,000 hits a day. Sounds 
     amazing.
       It isn't. Those 50,000 daily hits are a lot less 
     breathtaking than they seem, even if the figure is accurate 
     (and I have my doubts). In May, Interactive Age, a trade 
     publication, surveyed Internet sites. It reported that 
     Pathfinder (the site for Time Warner publications, such as 
     Time and People) had about 686,000 daily hits, Playboy had 
     about 675,000, and HotWired (the site for Wired magazine) had 
     about 429,000. I mention these popular sites because they 
     belong to magazines. As yet, none is forsaking the printed 
     page for the glories of the Internet.
       There are good reasons for this. One is that the number of 
     daily hits on a Web site exaggerates how many people use it; 
     the same person may hit the same site repeatedly. Another 
     reason is that the Internet hasn't yet evolved into an 
     effective platform for advertising. But the main reason is 
     that, for many purposes, the printed page is still superior 
     to the computer screen. You can flip pages faster than you 
     can search computer files. You can read a magazine standing 
     in a subway or lying in a hammock.
       Census's shift from print clearly discriminates against 
     people (including me) who don't surf the Internet or use CD-
     ROMs. We remain the vast majority. American Demographics 
     magazine recently reported a number of surveys that tried to 
     measure U.S. Internet use in 1994. The surveys put usage of 
     the World Wide Web between 2 million and 13.5 million people, 
     which is at most about 5 percent. The average income of 
     Internet households was $67,000, which is the richest fifth 
     of Americans. But it's not just computer clods or the 
     unaffluent who will suffer.
       Carl Haub is a demographer at the Population Reference 
     Bureau in Washington. He's a big user of Census statistics 
     and is comfortable cruising in cyberspace. ``It's going to be 
     a disaster for the average analyst,'' he says. Downloading 
     and printing data from the Internet can take hours. Getting a 
     number from a CD-ROM is often a lot harder than getting it 
     from a book. To Haub, Census is transferring a lot of the 
     cost--in time and money--of making statistical information 
     useful to people like him.
       Martha Farnsworth Riche, director of the Census Bureau, 
     admits as much. ``If someone else can do it, let's shift it 
     to the outside,'' she says. ``We've had a hiring freeze since 
     at least 1992, and those [printed] reports take an enormous 
     amount of time from professionals.'' They need to concentrate 
     on doing surveys of ``an economy and population that are 
     changing dramatically. Our statistics have fallen behind.'' 
     Only Census can collect much of this data, she says. Let 
     academics and analysts prepare reports.
       Up to a point, Riche has my sympathies. The Constitution 
     created the census (Article 1, Section 2), and social and 
     economic surveys are a basic function of modern government. 
     Some congressional proposals to cut the agency's budget 
     sharply are stupid beyond words. But that said, the new 
     approach is misguided. The danger of over-relying on 
     outsiders to organize and analyze basic data is that 
     statistics may fall hostage to special pleaders or 
     incompetents. Printed Census reports provide an easy way to 
     check self-interested or faulty claims.
       Print's other great virtue is that it guarantees a historic 
     record. Computer technology is changing so rapidly that data 
     committed to one technology may no longer be easily 
     accessible if that technology vanishes. ``The CD-ROMs that 
     we're so excited about today--20 years from now, no one will 
     use them,'' says Richard Rockwell, director of the Inter-
     University Consortium for Political and Social Research. 
     ``The book is a highly advanced technology for preserving 
     some kinds of information.'' Exactly.
       Let's not become too infatuated too soon with the 
     Information Superhighway. Census should be issuing its data 
     in computer-friendly ways, but not as a substitute for 
     printed reports. A jaunt on the Internet--piloted by my 
     friend Steve--only affirmed my skepticism. Steve typed the 
     Census Web address (http://www.census.gov), and up popped the 
     ``home page'' designating me as the 567,352nd visitor. Unless 
     the count began 10 days earlier (and it didn't), that was a 
     lot fewer than 50,000 daily hits. I informed a Census 
     official. He was mystified. After checking, he said there 
     were other ways of accessing the Web site that didn't raise 
     the count. Hmm. Could be. But it also shows how, on the 
     Information Superhighway, we're still navigating in the 
     dark.

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