Steve Doig, Knight Chair in Journalism, Professor

Professor Steve Doig is the Knight Chair in Journalism, specializing in computer-assisted reporting — the use of computers and social science techniques to help journalists do their jobs better. The chair was created with a $1.5 million endowment given to the Cronkite School by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.

Professor Doig joined the Arizona State University faculty in 1996 after a 23-year career as a newspaper journalist, including 19 years at the Miami Herald. There, he served variously as research editor, pollster, science editor, columnist, federal courts reporter, state capital bureau chief, education reporter and aviation writer.

Investigative projects on which he worked at the Miami Herald have won several major journalism prizes, including:

* The Pulitzer Prize for Public Service (1993) for What Went Wrong, an analysis of the damage patterns from Hurricane Andrew that showed how weakened building codes and poor construction practices contributed to the extent of the disaster.
* The Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Reporting (1994) for Lost in America, an examination of how the nation’s immigration policies have failed.
* The Investigative Reporters & Editors Award (1995) for Crime and No Punishment, a probe into why South Florida had the highest crime rate and the lowest incarceration rate of any major metropolitan area in the country.

Professor Doig is a political science graduate of Dartmouth CollegeHe also graduated from, and later taught at, the Defense Information School, and spent a year as a combat correspondent for the U.S. Army during the Vietnam War, for which he was awarded a Bronze Star for his service.

He currently teaches Precision Journalism (JMC 465) and Media Research Methods (MCO 302). He also served the Cronkite School as interim director for two years.

Professor Doig actively consults with print and broadcast news media outlets around the world on computer-assisted reporting problems. Examples include a study of racial profiling in Massachusetts traffic tickets for the Boston Globe, a study for the Cleveland Plain Dealer of racial differences in access to health care, and an analysis of the 185,000 uncounted ballots in the Florida presidential election of 2000 for the Miami Herald.

He is an active member of IRE and served on the 5,000-member organization’s board of directors for four years. Recently, he worked with IRE to organize a new journalism contest, called the Phil Meyer Award, to recognize the best journalism done using social science techniques.

In addition, he has been a speaker at many national meetings of journalism and other organizations. He also has traveled to Canada, England, Spain, the Netherlands, Belgium, Brazil and Indonesia to do training in precision journalism techniques.

Professor Doig's research interests include newsroom diversity, demographics, public opinion polling, and finding techniques used by other professions that can be developed into tools for journalists.

He is happy to work with graduate students whose projects require quantitative methods such as content analysis or survey research, or with students who are interested in doing an applied project that results in a significant piece of journalism.