The J Word 3.10: Digital News Numbers

This episode focuses more on the meanings of numbers in today’s digital journalism than in doing math. We explore issues of power, culture, professionalism, and inequalities – all surrounding how journalists use numbers.

In this airing, we speak with B.T. Lawson, a University Teacher in Media and Communication at Loughborough University in the UK and author of “Hiding behind databases, institutions and actors,” which interrogates how journalists rely sometimes more on sources than their own verification in the numbers they share in their reporting.

Jairo Lugo-Ocando, who is Director of Executive and Graduate Education at Northwestern University in Qatar discusses his coauthored piece, “Using statistics in business and financial news in the Arabian Gulf” that examines the intersections of professionalism and numbers literacy. 

And, Elizabeth Meyers Hendrickson, an Associate Professor in the Scripps College of Communication at Ohio University in the U.S. and co-author of “Mergers, acquisitions and magazine media in 2021,”  looks at how journalists interpret news about when they, themselves, are numbers in reporting on media mergers and layoffs.


Text Featured in this Episode:

Lawson, B. T. (2021). Hiding Behind Databases, Institutions and Actors: How Journalists Use Statistics in Reporting Humanitarian Crises. Journalism Practice, 1-21.

Hendrickson, E. M., & Subotin, A. (2021). Mergers, Acquisitions and Magazine Media in 2021. Journalism Practice, 1-15. 

Alaqil, F., & Lugo-Ocando, J. (2021). Using Statistics in Business and Financial News in the Arabian Gulf: Between Normative Journalistic Professional Aspirations and ‘Real’ Practice. Journalism Practice, 1-24.

Produced and hosted by Robert (Ted) Gutsche, Jr.

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