The Wall Street Journal won top honors for its story on the backdating of stock options. Gannett News Service was recognized for its analysis that rated hospitals on care for heart-attack patients, and a Philadelphia Inquirer investigation of a cheating scandal in New Jersey schools completed the winners list.
The awards are in honor of Philip Meyer, the Knight Chair in Journalism at the University of N
orth Carolina at Chapel Hill. Meyer was the Washington correspondent of the Beacon Journal 1962-1966. He is the author of Precision Journalism, the seminal 1973 book (and subsequent editions) that encouraged journalists to incorporate social science methods in the pursuit of better journalism.Philip Meyer's work in precision journalism established a new and ongoing trend-the use by reporters of social science research techniques to increase the depth and accuracy of major stories. Meyer shows journalists and students of journalism how to use new technology to analyze data and provide more precise information in easier-to-understand forms.
The Meyer Awards are administered by the National Institute for Computer-Assisted Reporting (a joint program of Investigative Reporters and Editors and the Missouri School of Journalism), and the Knight Chair in Journalism at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University.
The awards recognize the best uses of social science methods in journalism. The awards will be presented on March 9 in Cleveland at the 2007 CAR Conference, sponsored by Investigative Reporters and Editors. The first-place winner will receive $500; second and third will receive $300 and $200.
Precision Journalism indeed may have been spawned by an assignment Meyer and Bob Kotzbauer got from Ben Maidenburg at the BJ in the Fall of 1962. Meyer explains it all in a chapter of his book.
Click on the headline to read an excerpt from Chapter 4 of Precision Genealogy.
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