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Project Goal

The overall objectives of the IAJ are to: (1) encourage journalists -- educators and professionals -- to apply quantitative methods to their analysis, reporting and writing; (2) To search all academic disciplines for methods of problem definition, data acquisition and management and analysis that could be used by journalists; (3) to conduct research on the impact of the Digital Revolution on journalism and its role in democracy.

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Business Problem Solved

For more than 30 years, the principles of the IAJ have been exploring the analytic potential and power of GIS in a broad range of social, economic, political and cultural phenomena. We also consult with the journalism industry on the application of GIS in all sectors of the business: editorial, circulation, marketing and facilities management.

Technology Implemented

Multiple aspects of GIS are taught in seminars, lectures and workshops in the U.S. and internationally, specifically Europe, the Balkans, Latin America, Africa, and India.

Development Team Biography

J. T. Johnson, managing director, has been a journalist and journalism educator for the past 35 years. He is professor emeritus at San Francisco State University, covered El Salvador for TIME magazine in the '80s, and was deputy editor of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch in the late 1990s.

Stephen K. Doig, co-director, is the Knight Professor of Journalism, specializing in computer-assisted reporting, at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication of Arizona State University. Before joining ASU in 1996, he was Research Editor of The Miami Herald, where he worked for 19 years. Computer-assisted projects on which he worked at The Herald have won the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service. The Pulitzer project was an analysis of the damage patterns in South Florida from Hurricane Andrew in 1992 that made heavy use of GIS software.

Steven S. Ross has combined a career in teaching, writing, consulting, and technology. He now edits a trade/professional magazine (Broadband Properties, www.bbpmag.com) and teaches at Harvard University’s Extension School. From 1985 until mid-2004, Ross taught full-time at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism, offering courses in analytic journalism, new media, national, and computer-assisted reporting. He also headed the school’s science and environmental reporting program, worked with Columbia’s Mailman School of Public Health and College of Physicians and Surgeons, and coordinated the school’s dual-degree program for earth science writers with Columbia’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory. He has authored or edited 19 books and numerous surveys and technical studies. Ross graduated from Columbia with an MS in journalism in 1970, after earning his BS degree in physics at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 1969.