Remember last Friday’s New York Times front-page story on how poverty rates aren’t as bad as we’d feared? Today the Census released the figures behind that piece, and it turns out even where the Times was right, it still missed the point:

If you’ve been trying to follow the debate over the new measure of poverty released by the Census Bureau this morning, you’re probably completely confused by now. So far in the last few days we’ve seen:

• On Friday morning, the front page of The New York Times offered up the Census data as a ray of sunshine amid the economic gloom: “Bleak Portrait of Poverty Is Off the Mark, Experts Say,” read the headline, with the accompanying story—by longtime Times poverty reporter Jason DeParle and two others—noting that the Census’ new Supplemental Poverty Measure would likely make half of the reported rise in poverty since 2006 disappear… [read more]