The world’s grown too complex for journalists to cover using only literary skills. A generation ago, forward-thinking journalists developed computer-assisted reporting techniques, uncovering stories from public databases, including crime reports, school test scores and census data.

Unfortunately, CARR has remained a specialty within journalism, rather than a core skill. Part of this can be attributed to journalists’ collective hostility toward math and science. I’ve been training journalists in basic math for a decade, and in my experience, it is far easier to teach someone with high math aptitude how to report and write a journalism story than it is to teach a typical journalist math.

Why not, then, try to recruit more math-savvy students into journalism? —Robert Niles —What’s in the works for the next 12 months at OJR? (Online Journalism Review)