Journalists are bombarded with data from polls, especially when election season approaches. Are you confident you can tell the legitimate numbers from the sloppy surveys? How effectively can you evaluate the polling methods? Do you know when nine out of 10 isn’t really nine out of 10?

Join us as we host political pollster Mike O’Neil of O’Neil Associates, for this informative event, just in time for the deluge of polls that will be released before the Nov. 8 election. Mike will discuss the current state of polling and how to understand and evaluate polls.

It’s 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, Sept. 28, at Half Moon Windy City Sports Grill, 2121 E. Highland Ave., four blocks east of Route 51/Piestewa Freeway (Highland Avenue exit), Phoenix. SPJ welcomes all members of the media to this FREE event, but you must RSVP by Monday, Sept. 26 to: teri@phoenixspj.org.

Topics will include:
• Polls: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly—which is which
• Live interviewer polls, robopolls, internet polls: what’s the difference
• The Polling Aggregators (fivethirtyeight, pollster.com, and Real Clear Politics): which are better and why
• Why that “plus or minus” figure everyone always fixates on is actually among the least important of poll attributes (and why people still think it is important)

The Academy Award-winning 2015 film Spotlight will be shown at 6:30 p.m. Wednesday, Sept. 14, in the First Amendment Forum at the ASU Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication.

Walter V. “Robby” Robinson, the editor who headed the Boston Globe‘s Spotlight investigative team that reported the story of the pedophile priest scandal in the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston in the early 2000s, will speak in September at a Phoenix screening of the Oscar-winning film Spotlight, co-sponsored by the Valley of the Sun chapter of SPJ and the Arizona State  University Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication.

Walter V. “Robby” Robinson, former editor of the Boston Globe Spotlight Team, will speak at a screening of the film “Spotlight” in Phoenix Sept. 14.

Robinson, right, portrayed by actor Michael Keaton in the 2015 film — which won the Academy Awards for Best Picture and Best Original Screenplay earlier this year — will give remarks at the screening, at 6:30 p.m. Wednesday, Sept. 14.

The showing will be in the First Amendment Forum on the second floor of the Cronkite School, 555 N. Central Ave., Phoenix. The public is invited. Admission is free.

Officials announced on the Cronkite School website that Robinson has accepted a position at the school as Donald W. Reynolds Visiting Professor, teaching a course in investigative journalism for graduate and advanced undergraduate students. His Spotlight team’s series in the Globe won the Pulitzer Prize for public service in 2003.

SPJ arranged with the producers of the film to allow its professional chapters one-time licenses to show it locally. The Valley of the Sun (Phoenix) chapter was eager to secure a license for the Phoenix screening. The chapter is grateful to the Cronkite School for the opportunity to show the film on its large screen, which should give a local audience insight into how the Spotlight Team reported what ultimately became a national story.

Mara Liasson, national political correspondent for National Public Radio, delivers the John J. Rhodes Lecture in an event sponsored by Arizona State University’s Barrett Honors College 7 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 25, at Katzin Concert Hall in the Music Building at Arizona State University, Tempe.

The veteran reporter, who has covered six presidential elections, is scheduled to speak on the topic, “A Citizen’s Guide to the 2016 Election.”

Admission is free but tickets must be reserved. Click here for tickets and more information.