Never forget that you are not your audience. The other day, I handed my daddy a rough draft of an article entitled How News Broadcasters Spread Election Misinformation During the 2020 Election. His eyes crossed.

When he returned it, there were so many edits that it looked like he dunked it in a pail of blue paint. As I flipped through the pages, I noticed a pattern. He kept the story, scribbled out half the statistics, and left pointed comments beside the words “choropleth” and “data.” The message was clear.

He murdered my baby because I forgot that my target audience isn’t political science/data nerds like myself. I scrapped…