We keep an eye out for the most interesting stories about Labby subjects: digital media, startups, the web, journalism, strategy, and more. Here’s some of what we’ve seen lately.
The New York Times / Clay Risen
/ Nov 9Meyer’s “breakthrough came in 1967, in the aftermath of the Detroit riot that summer. Mr. Meyer, by then a national correspondent for The Akron Beacon Journal in Ohio, had spent the previous year at Harvard on a Nieman fellowship for journalists, intending to study how pollsters used computers to manipulate data. Instead, he realized the possibility of using computers in his own work. He took courses, learned code and even devoted time to using an IBM mainframe computer.” Soon after, as a reporter for The Detroit Free Press, “Mr. Meyer immediately seized on a claim, common in the news media, that the rioters had mostly been poor, uneducated Black migrants from the South. He gathered as much demographic data as he could, ran it through a computer and got a much different picture: The rioters were more likely to be locally born, and were spread evenly across the socioeconomic spectrum. A year later, Mr. Meyer shared in the Pulitzer Prize for local general or spot news reporting, which went to The Detroit Free Press for its coverage of the riot.” —LO
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data journalism,
Philip Meyer,
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