(Limor Peer)

Many go to journalism school because they like to write. They don't think of themselves as techie-types and certainly not as math-types. But these two skills - understanding of technology and comfort with math and statistics - are ever more important for journalists today.

The case for technology is fairly recent, as journalists are increasingly expected to master various audio and video gadgets, to be able to produce stories in various formats almost entirely on their own (a-la Kevin Sites), and to come up with creative ways to integrate technical skills with journalism (a-la Adrian Holovaty).

The call for numerical literacy (or "numeracy") has been around longer, and has been made most famously in journalism by Phil Meyer in his important book, Precision Journalism (now in its 4th edition). Meyer argues that as information becomes more readily available, "anyone in the information business, whether as journalist or propagandist, must use and understand numbers…" In 2004, Chip Scanlan also made a compelling case for why math matters in the newsroom. And if you need evidence that there's room for improvement, see Carl Bialik's column, The Numbers Guy, at the Wall Street Journal.

Back in 1998, the Committee for Concerned Journalists sponsored sessions to discuss journalists' core competencies and math was one of them. According to Deborah Potter of Poynter:

"Too often reporters and editors are suckers for numbers. To them, a number looks solid, factual, more trustworthy than a fallible human source. And being numerically incompetent, they can't find the flaws in statistics and calculations. They can't tell the difference between a meaningless number and a significant one. The result is stories that are misleading and confusing at best, and at worst flat out wrong."

What we think journalists should be able to do, and do well, is integrate numbers and tech skills into their work.

Medill is working on it.


Tech skills
One aspect of technology is simply the "stuff" you need to create a story. So, all Medill students have equipment available to them and are encouraged to use technology in their reporting and writing.

In addition, my colleague, Rich Gordon, a Knight News Challenge winner, got funding for a project that offers scholarships to people with computer programming background to study at Medill's graduate journalism program (see more here).

Numbers skills
Medill is also bolstering its math and statistics education. Numbers show up in various contexts, often conveying scientific authority and objectivity, and they find their way into the news. It is the journalist's job to translate complex, often specialized, information to the public and so facility with numbers is essential. Other schools are thinking about the same issues.

This past quarter, I taught a class called "News & Numbers." The class - a pilot class with 18 students - examined the relationship of numbers to news stories. I had two co-instructors, Arsenio Oloroso and Eric Ferkenhoff, both professional journalists on the Medill faculty, who coached students on the writing aspects (the News), while I focused on the Numbers.

The course covered much the same ground as statistics courses offered in other university departments, but it was geared toward Medill students - students used relevant data (e.g., audience research, media content analysis) to understand statistical concepts and learned how these statistics can be a useful and essential part of journalism. They also learned what many of the numbers being used in public discourse mean, where they come from, how to interpret and evaluate them, and how to use them in their own writing.

Some of the texts we used were:

• Kathleen Wickham's Math Tools for Journalists (2003, 2nd edition, Marion Street Press).
  


• Charles Livingston & Paul Voakes' Working with Numbers and Statistics: A Handbook for Journalists (2005, Lawrence, Earlbaum & Associates).
  


• Jane Miller's The Chicago Guide to Writing About Numbers (2004, University of Chicago Press).
  


• Victor Cohn & Lewis Cope's News and Numbers (2001, 2nd edition, Blackwell Publishing).
  


• Scott Maier's Numeracy in the Newsroom: A Case Study of Mathematical Competence and Confidence (2003, Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly.Vol.80, Issue 4; p921).
  


• Joel Best's Damned Lies and Statistics: Untangling Numbers from the Media, Politicians, and Activists (2001, University of California Press).
  


• Darrell Huff's How to Lie with Statistics (1954, W.W. Norton & Company).

The mantra for the class was, in the words of Phil Meyer again,

"The world has become so complicated, the growth of available information so explosive, that the journalist needs to be a filter, as well as a transmitter; an organizer and interpreter, as well as one who gathers and delivers facts. In addition to knowing how to get information into print, online, or on the air, he or she also must know how to get it into the receiver's head. In short a journalist has to be a database manager, a data processor, and a data analyst."

The class is by no means perfect. But we're working on it. This is an experimental class, and it will continue to evolve. Early feedback from students indicated that they thought the class was useful. But we do know two things: Journalism students need to be exposed to this topic, and you have to teach them about numbers in the context of news to make it relevant.

For those who are out of school, here is a partial list of resources for newsrooms interested in shoring up this aspect of their operation.

• You can take a math test for journalist on the Investigative Reporters and Editors site to see how you fare. The IRE site also offers other resources (such as data conversion).
  


• The news division of the Special Libraries Association - whose mission it is to "support the reporting, editing and illustrating of news stories by making available to journalists information and graphic materials" - complied a list of some good newsroom math resources. See also this slide presentation by Steve Doig from Arizona State University at the SLA's 2005 convention.
  


• Facsnet.org is another organization that provides resources for journalists, among them a math primer. Anthony Curtis of the University of North Carolina at Pembroke also compiled a good resource list about math for journalists.
  


• News University offers a course on math for journalists and the American Press Institute has a toolbox on writing with numbers.
  


• Robert Niles' Web site has a great guide to statistics written especially for journalists.

By Limor Peer (l-peer@northwestern.edu)
Limor Peer is research director for the Media Management Center and Readership Institute.