I found this article difficult to understand. Though I was able to eventually follow along with the theme, perhaps a quick explainer of what a "beat" is? Hint: in police terminology, a beat is the territory that a police officer patrols.
If you're not up to speed on the jargon, parsing graph titles like "Police beat resident population" become confusing (are we talking assault?).
Also, a summary of the findings and assertions at the beginning would have been helpful.
The problem with highly-charged reporting like this is that anything other than carefully justified claims and technical jargon will immediately bring a torrent of complaints. Each group that has a conclusion without looking at the data will try to poke any hole in any aspect of the argument and staying dry and technical helps stave off this sort of criticism.
That's an interesting take and I hadn't considered how the subject matter is such that staying clear of summaries is the best recourse -- thanks. But perhaps there is a way to add the very TL;DR that would have been near the bottom of the article at the top. I usually have no trouble skimming and digesting the reporting on wsj and nyt.
If you're not up to speed on the jargon, parsing graph titles like "Police beat resident population" become confusing (are we talking assault?).
Also, a summary of the findings and assertions at the beginning would have been helpful.
/rant