“Your numbers were wrong.”

As an editor, my first thought when I hear those words is that we messed up the lottery numbers, and plungers aren’t sure if they can tell their bosses where to go.

Monday, it was different.

This time, the figures that got some readers’ noses out of joint were the estimates of the number of protesters Sunday on the eve of the Republican National Convention in New York City. In the morning paper, the protest against President Bush and the Iraq war had been our top Page 1 story, and the headline read, “100,000 protest…” Our story said “more than 100,000.” Underneath the accompanying photo of protesters, the caption said, “Crowd-size estimates ranged as high as 400,000.” More on this discrepancy later.

Starting Monday morning, the phones lit up with callers saying, sometimes politely, sometimes accusingly and sometimes just plain nastily, that we low-balled the crowd. The number most often cited to us was 500,000; some people said they had been at the protest; others cited The New York Times, or at least its Web site, as what should have been the source of record. Some of the people said we were biased against the protesters; others said we were just ignorant. A few, bless them, just wanted to know why we ran a lower number than some other estimates.

Fair question.

Let’s back up to Sunday night, when we were putting together Monday’s paper. The Associated Press was saying “more than 100,000.” The Chicago Tribune was citing the AP. Other papers were reporting “hundreds of thousands” or “as many as 400,000.”

New York City, led by a Republican mayor and certainly aware of how its tourist image was on the line, wasn’t giving out any official figures, although the ever-present “law enforcement official, speaking on condition of anonymity,” estimated 120,000. On Monday, when the morning papers were already history, the city made that an official estimate of 120,000.

Crowd estimates are notorious crapshoots. Police almost always go low (“Aw shucks, no big deal, just an ordinary day”); event organizers can be counted on just as reliably to go high. (“This is the biggest turnout of the last 50 years and will change history.”) Usually, they’re both wrong.

Moreover, it’s just plain hard to get an accurate head count of a throng. Sure, there are techniques, but none is foolproof. And certainly, being a participant, engulfed in the proverbial sea of humanity and puffed up by the righteousness of your cause (yup, been there, got the T-shirt), is one of the worst ways to get a sense of crowd size.

Nevertheless, readers have a right to some sense of the magnitude of a turnout. And we have to make that happen under deadline, because many more readers will complain about a late paper than the estimate of a crowd in New York City.

On Sunday night, we decided to stand by the number being cited by AP (our primary, reputable and not-inexpensive provider of national and international information) and the Chicago Tribune. Then, aware of the wildly different figure, we hedged by giving the larger crowd estimates in the photo cutline.

Perfect solution? No way, but we did show the disparity in the estimates. More important, in my opinion, was the placement of the article and photo, as the lead piece in the paper. No matter what the number, it was a massive turnout, far more than the population of the Twin Cities combined, and merited major coverage. Which we provided.

So what about The New York Times Web site estimate repeatedly cited to us? I went back to the site, and here’s what the writer, one of their most experienced metro journalists, actually said:

“The protest organizer, United for Peace and Justice, estimated the crowd at 500,000 … double the number it had predicted. It was, at best, a rough estimate. The Police Department, as is customary, offered no official estimate, but one officer in touch with the police command center at Madison Square Garden agreed that the crowd appeared to be close to a half-million.”

Like I said, a crapshoot.

Keith W. Hagel is the Sun Journal’s night managing editor. He can be reached at 689-2858 or at khagel@sunjournal.com.