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Philip Meyer
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Paper Route: Finding My Way to Precision Journalism Paperback – January 25, 2012

by Philip Meyer (Author)
4.5 4.5 out of 5 stars 8 ratings
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As author Philip Meyer sat in a college class listening to a professor lecture about systematic tools for measuring things like trust in government, a thought struck him: a journalist could do this!


He thought about the newsroom conversations he'd had about the possibility of reporting on some interesting social phenomena. The group always ended with a shrug and a lament that there was no way to measure it--but he began to wonder.


It was an epiphany for Meyer, who went on to report on the 1967 racial riots in Detroit and write the groundbreaking book Precision Journalism. While others were arguing that reporters should not use scientific methods to make conclusions of their own, Meyer was using computers and statistical software to elevate the standards of traditional journalism.


At age fifty, he switched gears and entered the world of academe, where he continues to stir the pot. In Paper Route, he recalls two interconnected careers and examines how journalism, quantitative methods, and original thinking led him to live the remarkable life that he's still enjoying.

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  1. Print length
    364 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publication date
    January 25, 2012
  4. Dimensions
    5.5 x 0.75 x 8.5 inches
  5. ISBN-10
    1462083129
  6. ISBN-13
    978-1462083121
  7. See all details
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Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ iUniverse (January 25, 2012)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 364 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1462083129
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1462083121
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 14.9 ounces
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.5 x 0.75 x 8.5 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.5 4.5 out of 5 stars 8 ratings

About the authors

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  1. Philip Meyer

    Philip Meyer

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    Philip Meyer (1930- ) began his newspaper career as a carrier for the Clay Center (Kansas) Dispatch in 1943. He still porches his neighbors' newspapers when he finds them thrown carelessly at the curb. He majored in journalism at Kansas State and was editor of the daily Collegian his final semester in 1952. After serving two years in the Navy, he joined the Topeka Daily Capital as assistant state editor and met his wife there. She had a part-time job writing wedding stories, and she wrote their wedding story in 1956.

    Their wedding trip took them to Chapel Hill, N.C., where they remained while Meyer worked on his M.A. in political science. In 1958, the Miami Herald hired him to be its education writer, and he covered Florida's first court-ordered school desegregation. In 1962, he was posted to the Knight Newspapers Washington Bureau as correspondent for the Herald's sister paper, the Akron Beacon Journal. He won a Nieman fellowship to Harvard with the help of his bureau chief, Edwin A. Lahey, who had been a member of the first class of Nieman fellows in 1938. At Harvard, he studied the quantitative methods in social science that he had avoided in graduate school. He applied those methods while on loan to the Detroit Free Press to help cover the 1967 riot in that city. The use of survey research to discover the underlying causes of the riot was one factor in the awarding of the Pulitzer Prize for local general reporting to the staff of the Free Press.

    The civil rights and anti-war movements of the 1960s and 1970s offered more opportunities for demonstrating the journalistic application of social science methods, and the Russell Sage Foundation supported the writing of his first book, Precision Journalism, published in 1973. In 1978, Meyer turned his attention to newspaper marketing problems and joined the corporate headquarters of what by then was Knight Ridder Newspapers. Chapel Hill lured him back with a Kenan professorship in 1981, and he became the school's first Knight Chair in Journalism professor a few years later.

    Professor Meyer retired in 2008 and started writing a memoir that was published in 2012 as Paper Route: Finding My Way to Precision Journalism.

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  2. Philip Meyer

    Philip Meyer

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    Retired 2008 from Knight Chair in Journalism, University of North Carolina at Chapel. Author “Precision Journalism” and “The Vanishing Newspaper.”

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Customer reviews

4.5 out of 5 stars
4.5 out of 5
8 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Buzz Merritt
5.0 out of 5 stars How Philip Meyer Gave Journalism A Better Groove
Reviewed in the United States on September 11, 2012
Verified Purchase
For a couple of centuries of American journalism, the people doing it were driven to find out what was going on and tell others about it. The rituals and shibboleths that grew up around that quest were based in the soft arts of watching events and questioning the people involved in them. Thus journalism attracted people more inclined to qualitative thinking than to scientific rigor and quantitative analysis.
Most journalists still are mathematically challenged, an observation consistently confirmed during my almost-fifty years in the craft. But thanks to the felicitous blending of traditional journalistic instincts and scientific rigor in one man during the last half of the 20th Century, journalism and America's public life became better served.
In keeping with full disclosure, I knew Philip Meyer for almost forty of those years, benefited from his counsel and enjoyed his company. But even without those connections, his influence on my work and that of all journalists would be profound.
How that blending of two distinct ways of seeing the world came about is the subject of Meyer's latest book, "Paper Route: Finding My Way to Precision Journalism." It is a memoir, a genre I usually avoid because most are exercises in self-aggrandizement, justification or revenge. But "Paper Route" is a finely detailed job of reporting on the influences that led a Kansas farm boy to develop the transformative tools that became known as Precision Journalism. By applying scientific principles to what was essentially an exercise in liberal arts, Meyer deepened and lent new authenticity to the field.
And the book is fun, too: his skillful storytelling sprinkled with his dry and often self-deprecating wit and peopled by major players in post-1950's journalism. More broadly, it is a demonstration of how traditional barriers between disciplines not only can be overcome but converted into benefits for all.
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Kyu Ho Youm
4.0 out of 5 stars Informative/Readable, but little about his academic career
Reviewed in the United States on December 5, 2023
Verified Purchase
After poring over several newspaper obits of the late Prof. Philip Meyer in November 2023, I was keenly interested in the UNC-Chapel Hill's JMC professor's journalistic and academic career. Meyer and I crossed paths years ago and, as a grad student, I read PRECISION JOURNALISM [2nd ed. 1979]. PAPER ROUTE was readable and informative, especially about the author's family and journalistic career in data-assisted news reporting. But the book was a surprise to me as someone who was eager to know a little bit about his academic career. The News&Observer notes (Nov. 13, 2023): "Meyer returned to UNC as a professor in 1978, becoming the school’s first Knight Chair in Journalism a few years later. He would lecture on six continents and become beloved by generations of students, advising on 72 theses and dissertations." Indeed, Prof. Meyer writes (PAPER ROUTE, p. 336): "Once I reached 50, I realized that academe, at least for me, would be better. The Carolina appointment proved to be a good fit. I enjoyed each of a professor's three missions, teaching, research, and service." But PAPER ROUTE has little show and tell about Prof. Meyer's "teaching, research, and service" at UNC-Chapel Hill. Hence, it tends to be incomplete as his memoir as a journalist-turned-professor.
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bookmaven
5.0 out of 5 stars Fascinating Look Inside the Life of a Pioneer Research Inventor
Reviewed in the United States on September 1, 2012
This is a marvelously crafted book. It takes you inside Phil Meyer's head to watch the evolution of a Kansas farm boy whose journalism career started with a paper route. Who would have guessed he would become the pioneer who invented interview techniques and ways to crunch numbers so newspapers could predict election results and psycho-analyze the causes of race riots? And then he topped it off as a distinguished professor at the University of North Carolina, teaching the methods he had conceived to researchers and reporters all over the world.

Early on, his life in a series of Kansas farm houses seemed to have little design. Some of his relatives spent their entire lives on the farms where they were born. To avoid the draft and ground combat in Korea, Meyer tells how he manipulated the physical exam to become a Navy pilot. After nearly killing himself and his flight instructor, he began to think he would probably do much better as a newspaper reporter.

And he did. As a contentious editor at his college newspaper. At the Miami Herald, where he conducted a complicated study of school board no-bid insurance purchases. It proved they were paying three times too much. That established his investigative knack and he became national correspondent in Knight Newspapers' Washington Bureau. In Washington, he became more interested in how reporters could produce better stories if they could analyze public attitudes and behavior. That led to a Nieman Fellowship at Harvard, where he became a serious pollster and computer geek.

Meyer's first book was "Precision Journalism," published in 1973. It was truly ground-breaking material for sociologists and newspaper folks. Most of them had no concept of what those new-fangled computers could do. Meyer's techniques were so new, he had a hard time getting that first book published. In 1969, he had found it much easier to sell a Playboy Magazine article showing how to use game theory to successfully chase women.

Luckily, he worked for Knight Newspapers, where people at the top were willing to invest in Meyer's ideas. He was a major player when Knight introduced Viewtron, an early experiment that was really an Internet-like information service. It had to be abandoned because customers were not willing to buy an expensive device that was the precursor of personal computers. But you had to have it to receive the information Viewtron offered through a telephone line.

This book is another example of precision journalism. He must have saved every letter, every news story, every job application, every piece of paper in his life to provide such rich detail for the events he writes about. Along the way, he makes fun of himself with a wry grin. He shows what his failures taught him. What he learned about himself. This is a warm, intimate life story that traces, step-by-step, the fascinating trajectory that began when he tossed those newspapers from his bicycle with the fat tires. He does it with astounding, pinpoint accuracy. Highly recommended if you want to know how the news media REALLY work.
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Paul M. Steinle
4.0 out of 5 stars Frank and useful
Reviewed in the United States on September 21, 2012
Verified Purchase
Phil Meyer's story is an unvarnished journey of growing up amid "The Silent Generation" and trying to give it a kick in the pants. His journey through journalism reflects the changes this profession has encountered and how he worked to identify the newspaper industry's weaknesses and warn it about where it was going awry. This is an honest telling of the best and worst of the history of this business over his lifetime and a clear tale about one man's life in a profession he clearly loves. It's essential reading for journalists and those who care about this vital service industry.
2 people found this helpful
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