Author Malcolm Gladwell’s advice to future journalists is to avoid journalism programs. In an interview with TIME, he says:
“Aspiring journalists should stop going to journalism programs and go to some other kind of grad school. If I was studying today, I would go get a master’s in statistics, and maybe do a bunch of accounting courses and then write from that perspective. I think that’s the way to survive. The role of the generalist is diminishing. Journalism has to get smarter.”
You can read the full interview with Gladwell over at Time.com.
So Malcolm Gladwell would just “get a master’s in statistics.”
Liberal arts majors betray their arrogance and ignorance of all things numerate when they say things like this. It does not occur to them that perhaps going to graduate school to study a highly technical, mathematical discipline might require some prerequisite training.
Let’s face it, the innumeracy of most social commentators arises from lack of ability, not from poor career choices.