Systems theory or general systems theory or systemics is an interdisciplinary Interdisciplinarity article field which studies systems System article as a whole. Systems theory was founded by Ludwig von Bertalanffy Ludwig von Bertalanffy article , William Ross Ashby William Ross Ashby article and others between the 1940s 1940 article and the 1970s 1970 article on principles from physics Physics article , biology Biology article and engineering Engineering article and later grew into numerous fields including philosophy Philosophy article , sociology Sociology article , organizational theory Organizational theory article , management Management article , psychotherapy Psychotherapy article (within family systems therapy Family systems therapy article ) and economics Economics article among others. Cybernetics Cybernetics article is a related field, sometimes considered as a part of systems theory.
See http://www.definition-info.com/Systemics.html

IAJ Fellow Patrick Mattimore says on the SF Examiner Op-ed page that reading does not necessarily mean comprehension.
http://www.sfexaminer.com/articles/2005/03/14//opinion//20050314_op03_editorial3.txt

Reviewer's View: anacubis Desktop is a
novel and sophisticated tool for analyzing data—and connections between
data and data sources—imported from a wide range of sources and file
types, both textual and quantitative. The price is not trivial, and
developing anacubis expertise will require climbing a substantial
learning curve. But the potential rewards are great for analysts and
companies willing to take the long view.
http://www.econtentmag.com/?ArticleID=7126

The data and links are a bit dated, but this is still the best site for journalism and remote sensing, i.e. satellites.
http://www.american.edu/radiowave/

A good jumpstation for GIS resources.  Mostly ESRI-centric, but hey, it's the company store.
http://www.esri.com/industries/media/business/reporting_tools.html

Analytic
Journalism is:

Critical
thinking and analysis using a variety of intellectual
tools and methods to understand multiple phenomena and to communicate the
results of those insights to multiple
audiences in a variety of ways.

These tools and methods are far
more sophisticated than the traditional 5 Ws and H of classic journalism, but
they are rarely novel and often well known outside of journalism.  Indeed, analytic journalists consciously and constantly survey all other professional 
disciplines searching for methods that can be used by
journalists to do more insightful, meaningful stories.  The disciplines range from accounting
(forensic accounting and performance measurement) to medicine and public health
(epidemiology) to zoology (measuring relationships between species and
resources). 

There are some similarities
between computer-assisted reporting (CAR) and analytic journalism.  Both typically retrieve and analyze
quantitative data, or translate qualitative data into quantitative data for
more precise analysis, especially over time. 
Analytic journalists, though, seek methods beyond crunching numbers on a
spreadsheet or running filtering algorithms on a database.

Our working premise: Democracy only exists by the will and action of an informed
citizenry.  Ergo, citizens need to know:

·         
The state of their society if they are to make informed
decisions about what their government and society should be doing

·         
What is the condition of their government and society

·         
What the government and society are doing

·         
What the government and society plans to do

·         
How well the government and society are performing
relative to their own standards, the expectations of citizens and similar
institutions around the nation or world.

The fundamental questions
underlying all of this are:

·         
What do we journalists know and how do we know it?  (Just having someone telling us isn’t
sufficient, especially if they are telling us anecdotes.)

·         
How do we measure change and over time and place?

The winter 2004/2005 issue of ArcNews, published by ESRI, carries two stories about journalism institutions employing GIS.

* Newsweek Maps Out Hurricane Story With GIS and ESRI BIS Data: Fast, Accurate GIS Mapping Visually Enhances News Story

* CBS News Headlines GIS Mapping: 2004 Presidential Election Coverage

AARON RICADELA  writes in the NYTimes
Circuits section of an interesting piece of software that could give
infographic artists/reporters a fast leg-up on reporting a variety of
“interior” stories.  See March 10, 2005 http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/10/technology/
circuits/10next.html?oref=login

ORENSIC
experts who reconstruct crime scenes want to produce detailed drawings
that can stand up in court without disrupting sensitive evidence. But
creating hand-drawn sketches and taking photographs can take days and
disturb the scene. Computer-aided design packages that require
investigators in the field to enter data can be cumbersome, and results
can be difficult for jurors to decipher.

Now, a Canadian company is demonstrating prototype software, based
on advances in computer vision, that can stitch together a few seconds
of video from a hand-held stereo camera into a detailed 3-D model of a
room, including the people and the objects in it. Using Windows on a
laptop, the police or courtroom workers can zoom around the model to
view it from different perspectives, or click on its features to see
sizes, relative distances, areas and angles.

* The 1952 presidential election in the U.S. is a milestone in
the history of analytic journalism. CBS, working with Remington Rand
Corp. and an exit polling company, was in a position to predict
Eisenhower's sweeping victory in the electoral college thanks to a new
device called UNIVAC. But the network's journalists doubted the
accuracy of the computer's prediction. Click here to
see a portion of that coverage. (QuickTime .mov file)
See also: “In '52, huge computer called Univac changed election night.”  By Kevin Maney, USAToday 10/26/2004


* The UNIVAC computer was demonstrated on June 14, 1951 by
Remington Rand and its first customer was the U.S. Census Bureau. It
was the first commercial busines computer. http://www.historychannel.com/tdih/ram/0614.ram
[Requires Real
Audio plug-in]

* Perhaps the earliest example of a government using a binary
mechanical system to store and analyze data was the U.S. census of
1890. Here, however, is a newsreel
clip showing how the Czechs were using computers for their census
by the 1930s.

* The essence of analytic journalism is finding the tools and
methods of other disciplines and using them to better understand a
phenomena and tell the story. This segment from the CBS show “Sunday
Morning” illustrates well this transfer of method, technology and,
eventually, knowledge. Click here to
see the QuickTime .mov file.