Computer-Assisted Reporting

A Practical Guide

Brant Houston

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781317519423
• Edition: 4
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Journalism
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

This straightforward and effective how-to guide provides the basics for any journalist or student beginning to use data for news stories. It has step-by-step instructions on how to do basic data analysis in journalism while addressing why these digital tools should be an integral part of reporting in the 21st century. The book pays particular attention to the need for accuracy in computer-assisted reporting and to both the potential and pitfalls in utilizing large datasets in journalism.

An ideal core text for courses on data-driven journalism or computer-assisted reporting, Houston pushes back on current trends by helping current and future journalists become more accountable for the accuracy and relevance of the data they acquire and share.

Online instructor's materials are available to adopting professors, and additional exercises are available free online to students at the below address:

http://ire.org/carbook/
username: carbook
password: carbook4

1 Data Journalism

What Computer-Assisted Reporting Is and Why Journalists Use It

It is in computer-assisted reporting where the real revolution is taking place, not only on the big analytical projects, but also in nuts-and-bolts newsgathering. New tools and techniques have made it possible for journalists to dig up vital information on deadline, to quickly add depth and context.

— Joel Simon and Carol Napolitano, “We’re All Nerds Now,” The Columbia Journalism Review (1999)

CAR gives journalists the opportunity to dig for truth in data, and the comparative analysis that a computer can do often reveals pertinent questions. What reporters are able to learn from using CAR provides readers with knowledge and insights that can cut through the clutter of opinionated noise and celebrity obsession. It also can allow even relatively small news operations to delve into problems affecting the global community, yet speak to readers and viewers right around the block.

— Jason Method, “The Benefits of Computer-Assisted Reporting,” Nieman Reports (2008)

The words in the first quote were written as the twentieth century was coming to an end, but they remain true as we move deeper into the twenty-first century. The words in the second quote, nearly a decade later, show how crucial computer-assisted reporting has become in creating credibility and in recognizing the globalization of news. But there is still a revolution going on in journalism when it comes to data, both at basic and extraordinarily high levels.

In the past decade, software for analysis has continued to become much simpler to use. An overwhelming amount of data is now online and easy to download. Storage space is immense on hard drives, flash drives, and in the Cloud. The computing power on a laptop, tablet, or mobile phone dwarfs the power available only a few years ago. The ability to visualize data for better understanding and analysis has become pro forma. Furthermore, a new generation of computer programmers has joined traditional journalists to tackle the problems of capturing data from the Web, cleaning and organizing it, and creating fascinating presentations to be shared with the public and to encourage citizen participation and analysis.

At the same time, many fundamental truths remain the same. Databases are still created by people, and thus they naturally have omissions and errors that people have made and that must be noted and corrected. Every database also is a slice in time and thus is outdated the moment it is acquired and used.

Also remember that a database alone is not a story. Instead, it is a field of information that needs to be harvested carefully with insight and caution. It needs to be compared with and augmented with observation and interviews.

More important than ever is determining the accuracy of a database before using it. Equally important is careful analysis of the data, since one small error can result in monstrously wrong conclusions. The idea of uploading data on the Web and hoping the public or volunteers will consistently make sense of it with reliable analysis has proven unreliable. In fact, journalists—not advocates—are needed more than ever to deliver a well-researched understanding of information and data, and to tell a compelling story using data. Yet, despite changes in technology and the availability of mega-data, some scenarios have not changed.

For example, as a local reporter in the United States, you may want to look into how many inmates are in state jails because they cannot come up with the money for bail so they can be free until trial. You see that a recent audit of jails points out that many persons are in jail not because they have been convicted, but because they simply don’t have the finances to pay the bail set for them. Furthermore, it appears anecdotally that judges are setting higher bails for black and Hispanic males than white males. With a little research, you find that the county jails keep records on inmates that include the amount of bail in each case and each inmate’s race and gender. After a series of meetings, the officials agree to give you the database with the information you need. They don’t want to put it online for you to retrieve, but they will give you a DVD containing the database.

By the next morning, you do your first analysis of the data and see that the bail for black and Hispanic males is usually double that for whites, even when they are charged with the same crime and have the same criminal and personal background. Over the next few weeks, you check through the records and gather more details. You recheck your information, look at other documents, conduct interviews, and write the story. The work culminates in a front-page story that presents a systematic look at justice gone wrong. The best answer the officials have is the system discriminates against the poor, not just blacks and Hispanics.

Or consider this more recent scenario: You want to know how weak security is at your nearby metropolitan airport. So you get local police reports or download recent information from the Transportation Security Administration. You begin by analyzing the database, which consists of counting the number of violations at your local airport in recent years, and then closely examine the details of those violations.

You quickly find serious and surprising violations in which guns, knives, and other weapons are seized. You follow up with research on the Web and interviews with airport officials, law enforcement, and airline companies. You review reports by government investigators posted on the Web. Within days, you have an important story that the public needs to know.

In fact, more than 100 news organizations used local police databases while doing airport security stories in the weeks following the terrorists’ attacks in the United States on September 11, 2001. More recently, journalism students at Medill wrote this very story and created an online database to go with it.

As you will learn in this book, the techniques described in these scenarios are known as computer-assisted reporting, also referred to as CAR, and they are a part of everyday journalism. Journalists use these and other techniques for daily reporting, reporting on the beat, and for the large projects that win Pulitzer Prizes. In the past decade, journalism awards have gone to The Washington Post for stories on police shootings and child abuse; to The Sun Sentinel, of Fort Lauderdale, Florida, which used transponder toll records to investigate reckless speeding by off-duty police officers; and to the small newspaper the Bristol Herald Courier in Virginia for the work of reporter Daniel Gilbert, who built and used a database as part of his investigation into natural-gas royalties owed to thousands of landowners in southwest Virginia.

Computer-assisted reporting does not refer to journalists sitting at a keyboard writing stories or surfing the Web. It refers to downloading databases and doing data analysis that can provide context and depth to daily stories. It refers to techniques of producing tips that launch more complex stories from a broader perspective and with a better understanding of the issues. A journalist beginning a story with the knowledge of the patterns gleaned from 150,000 court records is way ahead of a reporter who sees only a handful of court cases each week.

Computer-assisted reporting doesn’t replace proven journalistic practices. It has become a part of them. It also requires greater responsibility and vigilance. The old standard—“verify, verify, verify”— that one learns in basic reporting classes becomes ever more critical. “Healthy skepticism” becomes ever more important. The idea of interviewing multiple sources and cross-referencing them becomes ever more crucial.

“Computers don’t make a bad reporter into a good reporter. What they do is make a good reporter better,” Elliot Jaspin, one of the pioneers in computer-assisted reporting, warned three decades ago. Many practicing journalists have sought training in the past two decades and become proficient in the basic skills of computer-assisted reporting. They have overcome computer and math phobia, and they now put these skills to use on a daily basis. And this has led to more precision and sophistication in their reporting.

To quote Philip Meyer, a pioneer in database analysis for news stories, “They are raising the ante on what it takes to be journalist.” Aiding in the progress and acceptance of these skills has been the proliferation of the Web and social media, the development of inexpensive and easy-to-use computers and software, and the increased attention to the value of data and techniques of analysis in newsrooms.

Computer-assisted reporting is no longer a sidebar to mainstream journalism. It is essential to surviving as a journalist in the twenty-first century. The tools of computer-assisted reporting won’t replace a good journalist’s imagination, ability to conduct revealing interviews, or talent to develop sources. But a journalist who knows how to use computers in day-to-day and long-term work will gather and analyze information more quickly, and develop and deliver a deeper understanding. The journalist will be better prepared for interviews and be able to write with more authority. That journalist also will see potential stories that would have never occurred to him or her.

The journalist also will achieve parity with politicians, bureaucrats, and businessmen who have enjoyed many advantages over the journalists simply because they had the money and knowledge to utilize databases and digital information before journalists did. Government officials and workers have long been comfortable entering information into computers and then retrieving and analyzing it. Businesses, small and large, routinely use spreadsheet and database software. Advocacy groups frequently employ databases to push their agendas.

Without a rudimentary knowledge of the advantages and disadvantages of data analysis, it is difficult for the contemporary journalist to understand and report on how the world now works. And it is far more difficult for a journalist to do meaningful public service journalism or to perform the necessary watchdog role.

As long ago as 1990, Frank Daniels III, executive editor of The News & Observer in Raleigh, North Carolina, recognized the challenge. He began his newspaper’s early and oft-lauded push into computer-assisted reporting because the 1990 campaign of then Senator Jesse Helms was profoundly more computer-sophisticated than Daniels’s own newspaper. “It made me realize how stupid we were, and I don’t like feeling stupid,” Daniels recalled.

Daniels was right about the bad position in which journalists had put themselves. For years, journalists were like animals in a zoo, waiting to be fed pellets of information by the keepers who are happy for journalists to stay in their Luddite cages. But a good journalist always wants to see original information, because every time other people select or sort that information, they can add “spin” or bias, which can be tough to detect. Computer-assisted reporting can help prevent that from happening.

Many journalists and journalism students now learn the basic tools of computer-assisted reporting because they realize that it is the best way to get to the information since most governmental and commercial records are now stored electronically. Despite security concerns, there still are a mind-boggling number of databases on U.S. government and international Websites. So without the ability to deal with electronic data, a journalist is cut off from some of the best and untainted information. The old-fashioned journalist will never get to the information on time—or worse, will be brutally trampled by the competing media.

For a journalist or journalism student, this knowledge also is crucial in the competition to getting a good job. At many news organizations, an applicant who has these skills—which are far more than the ability to surf the Web—gets his or her résumé moved to the top of the stack.

A journalist does not have to be a programmer or someone who knows software code, although that also can make a huge difference. A journalist who can use a spreadsheet or database manager is free to thoroughly explore information, reexamine it, and reconsider what it means in relation to interviews and observations in the field. The journalist can take the spin off the information and get closer to the truth. A journalist may not be a statistician, but a good journalist knows enough about statistics to know how easy it is to manipulate them or lie with them. In the same way, if a journalist understands how data can be manipulated, he or she can better judge a bureaucrat’s spin on the facts or a government’s misuse of a database.

Journalists have found, too, that if they let a person whose job is only to process data do the analysis, nuances or potential pitfalls of the data may be missed. A data programmer also does not necessarily think like a journalist; what may be significant for the journalist may seem unimportant to the programmer. Using a data programmer to do all the work is like asking someone else to read a book for you.

The conscientious journalist also does not want to fall into a cycle of asking for a report in some frozen digital format, studying the report, coming up with more questions, and then asking for another report. Why get into a lengthy back-and-forth when you can engage in a rapid, multidimensional conversation with the data on your computer screen?

Most important, computer-assisted reporting is at the heart of public service journalism and of vigilant daily reporting. This is true whether writing about education, business, government, environmental issues, or any other topic.

History of Computer-Assisted Reporting

Many practitioners date the beginning of computer-assisted reporting to 1952, when CBS tried to use experts with a mainframe computer to predict the outcome of the presidential election. That’s a bit of a stretch, or perhaps it was a false beginning because it wasn’t until 1967 that data analysis started to catch on.

In that year, Philip Meyer at The Detroit Free Press in Michigan used a mainframe to analyze a survey of Detroit residents for the purpose of understanding and explaining the serious riots that erupted in the city that summer. Meyer went on to work in the 1970s with The Philadelphia Inquirer reporters Donald Barlett and James Steele to analyze the sentencing patterns in the local court system and with Rich Morin at The Miami Herald in Florida to analyze property assessment records. He also wrote a book called Precision Journalism that explained and advocated using database analysis and social research methods in reporting. (Several revisions of the book have been published since then.)

Still, only a few journalists used these techniques until the mid-1980s, when Elliot Jaspin received recognition, while at The Providence-Journal Bulletin in Rhode Island, for analyzing databases for stories, including those on dangerous ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• 1. Data Journalism: What Computer-Assisted Reporting Is and Why Journalists Use It
• Part 1: Learning Computer-Assisted Reporting Skills
• Part 2: Using Computer-Assisted Reporting in News Stories
• Appendix A: A Short Introduction to Mapping Data
• Appendix B: A Short Introduction to Social Network Analysis
• Appendix C: Choosing Hardware and Software
• Selected Bibliography
• Glossary
• Index
• About the Author