NRJ Book: Math Tools for Journalists, Numbers in the Newsroom: Using Math and Statistics in News
2002; SAGE Publishing; Volume: 23; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1177/073953290202300413
ISSN2376-4791
Autores Tópico(s)Statistics Education and Methodologies
ResumoMath Tools for Journalists. By Kathleen Woodruff Wickham (Oak Park, Ill.: Marion Street Press, 2002), 159 pages, $16.95. Numbers in the Newsroom: Using Math and Statistics in News. By Sarah Cohen (Columbia, Mo.: Investigative Reporters and Editors, 2001), 108 pages, $25. Reviewed by Scott R. Maier In a focus group on newsroom use of math, a frazzled copy editor pleaded almost tearfully for a reference book she could consult on journalistic use of numbers just as she turns to the AP Stylebook for guidance on language. Fortunately, two excellent handbooks now provide a guide to the math that reporters and editors commonly encounter in their work. Math Tools for Journalists by Kathleen Woodruff Wickham and Numbers in the Newsroom by Sarah Cohen are written on the premise that all journalists, despite their pervasive fear of numbers, need math to describe the complex world that the numbers represent. Both books seek to help take the terror out of reporting numbers by conveying math fundamentals in practical journalistic terms. Both emphasize basic math but are comprehensive in their reach. And both books draw on the authors' extensive experience in the newsroom as well as in the classroom. In spite of their similarities, each differs in its approach to making math accessible to journalists. In Math Tools for Journalists, Wickham notes that journalists should be able to perform basic math before they begin their basic writing courses, but many cannot because these skills were learned long ago and shunted aside. She writes: not that journalists can't do basic math. It's that journalists have forgotten how. To address this deficiency, Wickham starts with the most basic math -- addition and subtraction - and covers increasingly complex topics ranging from percentage change to statistical analysis. For example, Wickham explains and demonstrates standard deviation in terms that journalists can understand. A former reporter who now teaches journalism at the University of Mississippi at Oxford, Wickham has devised skill drills (with answers) that apply to math problems that reporters confront on the job. In addition, each chapter provides Learning Challenges - hands-on activities that take the math lessons out of the classroom and into the real world. Underscoring the point that all journalists need math, Wickham sprinkles capsule accounts of real-life use of numbers in the news throughout her book. These components make Math Tools for Journalists especially useful in the journalism classroom. In Numbers in the Newsroom, Cohen seeks to show that skillful use of numbers requires journalistic sensibility. Selecting the right number for just the right place in a story, Cohen says, depends on the same news judgment you use in selecting just the right quote, anecdote or image. …
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