News nerds are the data journalists, news app developers, and web designers transforming how news stories are discovered and told. Allie Kosterich skillfully uses interviews, employment histories, trade press coverage, and conference proceedings to describe how these newsroom innovators have augmented reporting and changed accountability reporting for the better. If you've ever wondered who's behind the graphs, stats, and apps at news sites, this is the book that tells their tale. * James T. Hamilton, Hearst Professor of Communication, Stanford University * News Nerds is an ambitious and exciting book that reveals just how much the profile, roles, and skills of the professional journalist has fundamentally changed. Through an innovative mix of network career analysis, interviews, and analysis of the trade press, Allie Kosterich shows how news organizations have increasingly fashioned those wielding data, analytics, and technological skills into journalists creating new forms of journalism. Kosterich shows us how this has augmented the institution of journalism in the U.S., with sweeping implications for how the press navigates changing economic and technological contexts and its increasingly contested relationship with the public. * Daniel Kreiss, Edgar Thomas Cato Distinguished Professor, UNC Hussman School of Journalism and Media * News Nerds is an engagingly written and methodologically innovative analysis of an important ongoing transformation affecting the institution of journalism. Kosterich brings an incredibly impressive range of data sources and analytical approaches to bear to demonstrate how journalism has been restructuring itself in response to technological and economic change. This is institution-level scholarship of the highest order. * Philip M. Napoli, James R. Shepley Professor of Public Policy and Director of the DeWitt Wallace Center for Media & Democracy, Duke University * The rise of the news nerd is not so much a story of the revenge of the nerds saving journalism through data but is instead a reminder that institutions and professions adapt to change, and change doesn't just happen when new technologies emerge. Kosterich develops the concept of "institutional augmentation," moving beyond tired binaries of change outcomes in organizations, a theoretical contribution relevant to all industries that find themselves in the throes of technological upheaval. * Nikki Usher, author of News for the Rich, White, and Blue: How Place and Power Distort American Journalism * This book assesses the institutionalization of new types of editorial positions in US news organizations... The book is an excellent companion to Jason Whittaker's Tech Giants, Artificial Intelligence, and the Future of Journalism. Recommended for higher education journalism, mass communication, and visual arts programs. * Choice *
