By: “A journalist could do this!” – Reflections on Phil Meyer’s “Paper Route” « Michelle Minkoff

Sun, 12 Feb 2012 20:37:12 +0000

[...] afraid, but I’ve studied his work closely. I look back fondly on a phone conversation when I interviewed him in April 2010 for this blog’s Data Delvers [...]

By: Marcelo Soares

Marcelo Soares — Tue, 06 Apr 2010 00:42:47 +0000

Phil Meyer is THE man. Finding a dusty, unread edition of “The New Precision Journalism” in my j-school’s library changed the way I see journalism. That’s 12 years ago, in the south of Brazil. You’d never guess how proud I was when he answered the first email I sent him, in 1999. Since 2003, I’ve been teaching some data tricks in newsrooms and journalism courses all over Brazil, and I always leave some minutes to tell about Phil Meyer’s protagonism. You should see the faces of 40-something journalists who say “computers are for kids” when I show Phil was doing that when they couldn’t read, feeding punched cards into refrigerator-sized mainframes. Four years ago, when I got a national journalism award with a database of profiles of Brazilian congressmen, with all kinds of public data that were available, it was with gratitude that I sent our guru a pic of the ceremony, with a frame saying “Thank you, Phil”. He not only inspired my early data delvings – he also gave insight to the rough idea before I presented it to the institution that accepted to move it forward. I said before and I repeat: Phil Meyer is THE man. I didn’t have the opportunity to be his student in person – but his writing is so clear that I could learn a lot from that. (Okay, Phil, I know you’re reading this, so don’t blush.)

Comments on: Data Delver: Phil Meyer

By: “A journalist could do this!” – Reflections on Phil Meyer’s “Paper Route” « Michelle Minkoff

By: Marcelo Soares