Liberal Talk Radio

In case you’ve ever wondered why most journalists don’t get the difference between mean and median, or how to adjust economic growth numbers for inflation, now you know:

“As for teaching journalism students how to do computer programming, that’s a long way from happening. Clyde Bentley, associate professor at Missouri School of Journalism, told me via email that there’s a disconnect between journalism skills and math skills.

‘A huge number of journalism students select that major because they are math-phobic and they think they will get away from numbers,’ Bentley said. ‘You don’t have to be a mathematician to program, but you can’t be afraid of math.’

Holovaty, who attended the Missouri School of Journalism, ran into that attitude when he was at school there in the ’90s.

‘When I was in J-school I remember several times, the professor would say something like, ‘Well that would involve math, and that’s why we all went to journalism school — so we wouldn’t have to learn math. Ha, ha, ha.’ And everyone would laugh,’ he told me. ‘C’mon, this is just blatant anti-intellectualism. It’s deeply ingrained in the culture, which is ludicrous.’”

More here.