David Carr, media critic for the New York Times and one of the nation’s best-known voices on trends in news, technology and entertainment, died February 12, 2015. He was 58.
Here at Journalist’s Resource, we love research. Early in our careers, however, we as individual journalists didn’t always appreciate the value of research or interpret it correctly. We did not always use the best study to make a point or fact-check a claim. Learn from our mistakes. Here are some things we wish we knew years ago.
1. Academic research is one of the best reporting tools around.
A growing number of research organizations are not only placing their data online, but giving users free tools to help visualize it. This overview of a few of these resources focuses especially on economic and development indicators.
The intersection of knowledge and narrative, of informed journalism, is the heart of what the Journalist’s Resource project continues to explore. In the short essay below, Nicholas Lemann, a professor and dean emeritus at the Columbia Journalism School and a longtime staff writer for The New Yorker, articulates a method for journalism that integrates knowledge while preserving the art of storytelling. We reprint it here with his permission:
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How are partisan media sources affecting the character of democracy? How extreme is media bias? What does the latest, deepest research say about these questions?
As journalism students look for deeper approaches to reporting on their campuses, they might consider the world of academic research, which can provide both fresh ideas and important perspectives. Sometimes studies are used directly by journalists in their stories; in other cases, they’re a way for reporters to educate themselves about issues and to locate and tap into networks of experts.
