I Take Credit

I take credit for apparently having killed the bad polling practices of our student newscast. It's been since Oct. 8 that the j-students posted a revised god-awful pseudo-poll on the Grady Newsource site. They seemed to do one of these things every week. Until now.

I wrote at length about their reporting of bad, self-selected polls. You'll find my rather colorful language here, and then here. There are others, but you get the idea, and from them you can work your way back to a more technical explanation of why such SLOPs suck and represent bad, misleading journalism. What's odd and a bit troubling, though, is not a single j-prof who oversees the newscast, nor a student who actually puts it out, came to talk to me. I did get a weird phone call, mentioned in one of the posts linked to earlier in this graph, but that's it. I am possibly the most up-to-date faculty member in the building when it comes to polling. Hell, I teach our graduate-level public opinion class. Plus I've taught classes in public opinion reporting.

If nothing else, perhaps I've killed this practice. I try to watch the newscast every day, plus I always check the site and, especially, follow Newsource's excellent Twitter feed. We'll see. Yes, Newsource, I've got my eye on you.