My father is a journalist, he has been so his whole life. He has taught journalist-students and written books on journalism and he is quite objectively, a wise man. I’ll prove that to you by presenting one of his key journalistic concepts – the journalistic equation (slightly modified by me):

J = KP x S_(o) x S_(k)

Journalism=Knowledge x Presentation x Sources x Skill. The short explanation of (my understanding) of the parameters are: knowledge (K) is the necessary prior information one needs before writing starts, presentation (P) is your ability to reach your target audience, sources (S_(o)) represents the sources you have used and skill (S_(k)) represents your ability to critically review and balance the information from these sources.

The equation was written to help journalist-students understand some journalism basics (surprisingly many fail in these basic skills). His main point has always been that a score of zero in any of these factors would give you a score of zero for journalism. And, this is adequate I guess, in many settings.

But, since it comes natural to a son to try and outcompete his father or (as a less aggressive alternative) to build further on his work, I’ll try and expand on his formula by putting numbers on it. I believe the formula in this way can be put to good use for us common readers of news, now as a reviewing tool rather than an educational one. Although, hopefully there is something to be learned (for journalists) by being reviewed as well.

J=1 would mean excellent journalism, no flaws, and J=0 would mean completely flawed. All factors get a score between 0 and 1.

As an example, a professor in protein structure biochemistry would get a “K=1” for writing a piece on the crystal structure of a protein and he would probably score “S_(o)=1″ on sources. But, the professor could easily score less than one on his ability to scrutinize the sources (S_(k)=0,85) and quite possibly get a “P=0,5” for presentation. This would give his news piece a J=0,425. The nature of the equation makes it very hard to achieve a score close to 1, and even with numbers close to 1 for each parameter, J will probably be closer to 0,5 than1. That’s intentional, – a perfect news piece is rare, and most are flawed to a larger or lesser extent.

To complete this project of numerical assessment I need to put together a calculator, and I will. But, for now anyone can still use the equation, – after all it’s just multiplying numbers between zero and one and get a value out. I propose to call it the  J-value (although as a tribute to my father, I may be calling it a “Reinton-value” ).

My small contribution to try and make (science) journalism better…..is from now on to put a Reinton-value on any news piece I comment on.

I hope many others will use this tool too – Reinton-value=J = KP x S_(o) x S_(k) – remember, power lies in the numbers.