Philip Meyer, a former reporter who pioneered new ways to incorporate data, quantitative methods and computers into investigative journalism, died on Saturday at his home in Carrboro, N.C., a suburb of Chapel Hill.
His daughter Melissa Meyer said the cause was complications of Parkinson’s disease.
With a career spanning the latter half of the 20th century and several years into the 21st, Mr. Meyer was at the center of a revolution within the craft and business of journalism — a revolution that, to a large degree, he helped shape.
When he began working as an assistant editor at The Topeka Daily Capital in Kansas in the mid-1950s, computers were room-size, turtle-speed contraptions, and reporting was done mostly through interviews, with the occasional trip to the library or the government records office.
Mr. Meyer was among the few reporters who saw the growing power of computers to crunch data and produce new insight into complex questions.
Persons:
Philip Meyer, Melissa Meyer, Meyer
Organizations:
The, The Topeka Daily Capital
Locations:
Carrboro, N.C, Chapel, The Topeka, Kansas