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The biggest barriers to computer-assisted reporting are time and desire -- not money. Chase Davis, Matthew Waite and Derek Willis, who are attending the NICAR conference in Houston this weekend, list the free tools data-minded journalists can use instead of commercial alternatives, some of them costing thousands of dollars. Note that they're sharing the list on Google Docs -- also free (but not open source, as is the other software).
Bill Moyers Journal profiles David Heath, a reporter for the Seattle Times who once worked at The Courier-Journal, and his year-long investigation of Congressional earmarks. The half-hour TV show chronicles how Heath and the Times, which has nine full-time investigative reporters and editors, built a database of Congressional earmarks and cross-matched them against campaign contributions to expose some outrageous examples of wasteful spending. You can read the series and look up earmarks in the database online. At one point, an intern for the Times who helped type data into the database, tells the TV show she learned that investigative reporting isn't glamorous, as you would think from tales of the exploits of Woodward and Bernstein, but "really tedious."
How about this, eh? The Canadian Journalism Project has a page devoted to computer-assisted reporting. This is how the project describes itself:
The Canadian Journalism Project (CJP) and its websites, J-Source.ca (English) and ProjetJ.ca (French), are projects of The Canadian Journalism Foundation in collaboration with leading journalism schools and organizations across Canada. Our goal is to enable a national conversation about the achievement of, and challenges to, excellence in Canadian journalism and provide a convenient and trustworthy source of information and commentary. The site provides a source for news, research, commentary, advice, discussion and resources. It also includes an expanding database of award-winning journalism, and links to other organizations that recognize and support excellence in journalism.
The Reporters' Cookbook is a still nascent wiki where reporters and fellow-travelers can "share code, examples, tutorials and other bits of information related to the practice of journalism, especially computer-assisted reporting." Yours truly is an administrator, although my most recent contribution was to write a script to battle an infusion of Chinese-language spam. Christopher Schnaars of The Morning Call has just contributed a free Excel training course, which can be found on The Cookbook's Excel page. There's a link there to download the course, which includes handouts and data sets for training others or yourself on how to use Excel. Schnaars is also writing a tutorial on using ASP.NET to put databases on the Web.
Mindy McAdams at Teaching Online Journalism uses an interview with Derek Willis of the Washington Post to introduce her suggestions on how to learn about databases. She's addressing students, but these are good ideas for any database-phobic professional.
Why should you care about databases if you are a journalist? Think of it first as keeping track of bits of information. Well, heck — that’s essential for every journalist! How do you do it? With a messy stack of old reporter’s notebooks, perhaps. Uh-huh. How’s that working for you?
Journalism.co.uk ("The essential site for journalists") explores the state of computer-assisted reporting in Great Britain:
One reason for the slow uptake of CAR practices in the UK press is that it has only recently been allowed access to the data sets, through the Freedom of Information Act (FoIA), which came into force in 2000. The New York Times may have a dedicated staff of nearly 20 working on CAR but then the US has had federal freedom of information since 1967.
"The ignorance of CAR is a function of the lack of freedom to information," said Gavin MacFadyean, who runs training courses open to British journalists on aspects of CAR for the Centre of Investigative Journalism. "There is not a tradition here of open-access, transparency and easily available information.
"A common complaint against CAR is: 'it is very American, it wouldn't work here because there is no information'. But it's not true. There is lots of information but you just have to dig it out.
Derek Willis of TheScoop.org has given his site what he calls "The Treatment." He's converted it from a blog format into a browsable database of computer-assisted reporting stories. You can now browse selected stories back to 2000 by byline, source, topic, type of data used, date, state and more, as well as subscribe to specialized feeds, such as all new entries from a particular newspaper or reporter. He used the open source Web framework Django, which was created with the help of his friend and Washington Post colleague Adrian Holovaty, who is also co-authoring a book on how you can do it too.
Poynteronline's E-Media Tidbits blog asks, "Does Anyone Still Say 'Computer-Assisted Reporting'?" I've added my take there.
The Online Journalism Blog, by British journalist Paul Birmingham, writes about "online journalism, citizen journalism, blogging, podcasts, vodcasts, interactive storytelling, publishing, Computer Assisted Reporting, searching and all things internet."
Colin Meek at journalism.co.uk wonders why at the recent Global Investigative Journalism Conference in Amsterdam "there were fewer participants from the UK than from South Korea." He notes that unlike in Britain, computer-assisted reporting "is catching on in European countries where investigative journalism is thriving. ... In the Netherlands and the Nordic countries there are now data analysis specialists who only do investigative stories and teach CAR skills through association meetings and conferences. CAR is now gaining momentum in Germany, Bulgaria, Romania and Serbia. Grasping what CAR means is about understanding the full potential of the internet as a tool for journalists."
A blogger, Oso, who attended the Heritage Foundation's recent seminar on computer-assisted reporting explains what it's all about:
"If you're like me, you're wondering what the hell one of the nation's most prominent conservative think tanks is doing hosting a seminar to teach bloggers and journalists how to better interpret statistics and databases. Mark Tapscott, who besides working for Heritage is also a board member of the Media Bloggers Association, answered that very question in his introduction before anyone could ask it. Heritage has a near-paranoid distrust of government and they would love to have a contingent of conservatively-minded journalists watch-doggin' every government payroll, budget, and study."Oso goes on to say, "It is also very much to the Heritage Foundation’s credit that the two-day seminar focused wholly on techniques instead of ideology."
"I loathe Introduction to Computer-Assisted Reporting. It is the bane of my existence. My professor takes this class and himself way too seriously and this is a very basic class. I shit you not, we've spent the past three weeks going over what a web address means and the meaning of .com, .gov, .org, and .edu. I'm about ready to pull my hair out I'm so bored."
If you’ve been paying attention in the last 24 hours you’ll notice the CAR Report has a new name: Depth Reporting.
Why? One reason is that I never intended the CAR Report to become a blog. It began as a semi-regular email on computer-assisted reporting topics I would send to the staff of The Courier-Journal, where I am the computer-assisted reporting director. I put it on the Web two years ago after several people asked me if there was a way they could read it from home without having to forward it to themselves.
I called it the CAR Report because the morning I sent the first email I couldn’t think of a better name. (I remember one newspaper had a CAR newsletter called “Mouse Droppings,” but that wasn’t quite the image I wanted to project). The name has been with me ever since, and I will continue to use it inside the newspaper. On the Web, however, it’s another matter. I know from my server logs that I get a lot of visitors looking for information on automobiles. If you do a Google search on “car report” you’ll find that the CAR Report turns up fourth – a Google rank many a Web site would kill for. But I hate to disappoint all those people looking for ratings on that new Hummer.
I also agree with those who find “computer-assisted reporting” an awkward phrase (see, for example, the recent discussion on NICAR-L, assuming, that is, that you’re an IRE member). A British blogger recently chastised me and other journalists for using it. He called it an “archaic term” and “kind of silly.” Fair enough, but for better or worse, it’s the name that’s stuck. The language will do what the language wants to do.
I like computers, but my interest isn’t in computers as such – it’s in using them as a tool for research and writing. I’m interested in anything that will improve my reporting skills – whether it’s software, a book, a statistical technique or a different way to organize my files. Focusing too much on computers misses the point and scares away some who otherwise would be interested.
I chose Depth Reporting as the name because it doesn’t carry the computer baggage and it states directly what I’m interested in: encouraging richer, deeper reporting. Besides, my wife liked it better than the alternatives I offered (and will take with me to my grave).
Truth is, I’m mostly talking to myself because the audience for the CAR Report is miniscule. A few weeks ago I began running my feed through FeedBurner, and it tells me roughly 30-35 people regularly get my feed. If you’re one of those people, I hope these changes don’t lose you. In making the change, I’ve had to redirect the old links to the CAR Report to the new links for Depth Reporting, and I’m not sure all the changes will work as intended. We’ll just have to see. For the record, the new home page for Depth Reporting is http://schaver.com/depthreporting.html and the new address for the feed is http://feeds.feedburner.com/DepthReporting. Try entering the new feed address manually in your reader if you’re having problems. Or email me at schaver at gmail dot com and I’ll try to help.
Thanks for reading.
Pat Stith of the Raleigh News & Observer wrote an excellent article on computer-assisted reporting for a Poynter seminar on watchdog journalism. Stith offers a number of good examples of how his paper uses CAR (including on daily stories, not just projects) and suggests ways other newspapers can improve their efforts.
Here's what he says about middle managers:
"You have to find a way to work around your middle managers. They may say they are CAR advocates, because that's what they know you want to hear. But they're not, most of them, and I'll tell you why. They are under a lot of pressure to fill the paper with good stories. Not great stories. Good stories. And when all is said and done, they're not willing to give up a couple or three good stories on the possibility, maybe even probability, of getting a great one. A middle manager who pushes his or her reporters to learn CAR is a rare bird."
Stith also says newspapers should create research departments to institutionalize CAR:
" ... at most newspapers, there's a reporter in the newsroom, often only one, who can make a computer sing. His or her desk is piled high with data and documentation. They're up to their elbows in work for other reporters. And when they leave you, when they resign, your CAR program goes with them. This could, and should, be avoided by institutionalizing your gains. At The N&O, responsibility for every aspect of the CAR program has been assigned to our News Research Department. News Research maintains our data and data documentation. It loads data, and does analysis for reporters who can't do their own work. It runs the CAR Fellowship Program, teaching reporters. And, increasingly, it has begun handling the fights over access to data. My newspaper could lose a bunch of us, and keep on rolling."
And he says newspapers should develop a formal process for tracking record requests:
"I recommend to you a policy we have at The News & Observer that I think every paper in the country ought to adopt. Here it is: When a reporter is denied a record that he or she thinks is public they must notify their supervisor. If the supervisor can't resolve the conflict satisfactorily, they must notify their supervisor. And so on up the ladder, until the problem lands on management mall. Good reporters like this policy because it brings management, which has far more muscle than we do, into the fray. Management ought to like it too, because you don't want reporters making policy at your newspapers. And, in effect, that's what they're doing when they allow the government to kick them around on a public record issue."
It's a must read.
Donga.com used the "Computer Assisted Reporting technique" to show that high-ranking Korean officials rarely served out their full sentences when compared to more run-of-the-mill criminals. I especially love this translation from the Korean original:
After all, the big wigs of absurdity tend to receive a verdict of innocence far higher than the average individual.
