Paper Route: Finding My Way to Precision Journalism

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 19...