To get things started, each team performed a Web search to explore dimensions of computer-assisted reporting. They looked for aspects of CAR such as: courses both in and out of universities; on-line publications about CAR; organizations supporting some aspect of CAR; resources for databases to be used in CAR. They then wrote a summary of what was learned, including a conclusion about the meaning and use of CAR in journalism. Their papers can be found on this page.
Team 1 Roger Kuznia Steve Lane Anne Lieb Team 2 Ce'on Barnes Tracy Potocki Terra Tham Team 3 Angi Adams Anne Pollpeter Jason Rossi Team 4 Tracy Bushman Jaime Paton Eric Solomon Peter Thompson Team 1 Roger Kuznia Steve Lane Anne Lieb
With the recent advances in computer technologies, reporters are seeking to take advantage of the benefits of computer assisted reporting (CAR). Unfortunately, for many of us, this is foreign territory. Appropriately enough, we used a web search to compile information about CAR.
Internet searches on dimensions of computer assisted reporting--available courses to learn CAR, CAR online publications, organizations supporting CAR and available databases to do CAR--reveal plenty of information.
CAR Courses Available
Logically, with CAR increasing in popularity, more and more courses in CAR are being offered; both to budding journalists at colleges and universities, as well as to experienced journalists already in the field.
The National Institution for Computer Assisted Reporting (NICAR) seems to be the preeminent teacher of CAR skills for professional journalists. NICAR offers two options for journalists: either a one week seminar at the University of Missouri-Columbia, or a traveling seminar that comes to the journalists.
The seminars offered at the University of Missouri are often referred to as "one week boot-camps." According to NlCAR's website (www.nicar.com), they are meant to train journalists to "acquire and negotiate for electronic information, to use various kinds of software to analyze information and to translate that information into high impact stories."
If journalists cannot make it to Columbia, Mo., NICAR will come to them, or at least nearby. These "on the road" seminars are conducted in various cities across the United States. They are meant to serve the same purpose as the seminars in Missouri. If you're in Kansas City from September 11 to 13, or in Chicago from September 17 to 19, you can attend one of these seminars. You can reserve a spot through NICAR's website with a $200 deposit. There is a $40 fee for those who are not members of Investigative Reporters and Editors.
The University of Iowa is not the only university to offer CAR instruction. A web search also yielded several references to Bruce Garrison, a journalism professor at the University of Miami in Coral Gables, F1. Garrison teaches CAR skills at that University. His two courses are "Reporting and the Intemet" and "Computer Assisted Reporting."
At Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU), the School of Mass Communications has been integrating CAR skills into its journalism curriculum. They are also planning to open a state of the art facility called the ''21St Century News Center. This will be a journalism program for graduate students to help them develop new journalism skills, including computer assisted reporting.
The rise of computer technologies shows no sign of abating. This means that electronic information will continue to grow in importance for future joumalists. These skills will also continue to be an integral part of a journalist's training.
Online Publications About CAR
Search for online publications that deal with CAR, and you'll find many newspapers who have posted their computer assisted stories on the web.
The Knight-Ridder newspaper chain has their own website on what stories their newspapers have been working on with the aid of computers. On their homepage, an explosion occurs continuously, symbolic of how the papers can uncover government wrongdoing and have an outraged public, after reading these stories, blow up in the government's face.
For example, the Miami Herald had t~vo stories on the Knight-Ridder site. One was about how Miami police abused the overtime policy. They frequently used more officers than necessary in taking care of driving under the influence cases. The site said since most of these cases go to court, the extra officers go to court to testify, even though their testimony isn't necessary to successfully prosecute a case.
The site made it very easy to see the package the paper developed for the story. You could point and click on it with a mouse. There was also a related site that talked about how the story was done.
There was one site that gave the nuts and bolts of what CAR is all about. It was called Mouse Droppings, an online newsletter edited by Jennifer LaFleur at the San Jose Mercury News.
The newsletter is published monthly with eight feature articles of what are good web sites to look at for databases or software in doing computer assisted reports, what other journalists from around the country have experienced in the course of their computer work and unique story ideas.
The first Mouse Droppings issue began in December of 1995 and it was interesting to see that even then, computer assisted reporting was still largely unknown because the first article talked about what CAR was and how it could help journalists.
The site is a little bit behind in putting up the June, July and August 1998 editions of the newsletter on the web. It only has through May of 1998.
Some of the reporters contributing to the newsletter mentioned their fears in beginning computer assisted projects. However, when they tried it, they saw how easy and valuable CAR can be. I initially thought in all of the reports done by papers, they had computer whizzes doing all of the necessary legwork. But this isn't true. There's people learning all of the time.
One story I enjoyed was one about the Michigan state lottery and this journalist's report on how frequently numbers have come up in past drawings. This seems like a lot better way to do a lottery story than ask lottery ticket buyers what they're going to spend the money on if they win. Personally, I'd find her report interesting. If that could have been done for the multi-state $295 million Powerball drawing, that would have been a great story.
CAR Resources
There are many organizations that provide information and resources on computer assisted reporting. Many of these organizations provide valuable online resources.
Investigative Reporter's and Editors (IRE) offers various resources. Besides holding seminars teaching CAR skills, the IRE publishes instructional books. The IRE resource center online provides 12,000 investigative stories, 500 conference tipsheets, and online advice. The resource center is free of charge to IRE members and costs $10 for non-members. Their website is www.ire.org/resources/.
The Ryerson Institute for Computer Assisted Reporting in Canada has a database of databases on its website, www.ryerson.ca/~ ricarc/. Their CAR/CARR links page has links to news, weather and sports databases. There is also a list of Canadian federal and governmental databases.
The National Institute for Computer Assisted Reporting (NICAR) is an excellent resource for journalists interested in CAR. Founded in 1989 as a program of the IRE, NICAR specializes in training journalists to analyze databases through various seminars. NICAR also has a mailing list that can be used to contact other individuals for CAR discussions.
The CAR Network of Canada is another organization dedicated to promoting computer assisted reporting. The CAR Network provides training and lobbies to ensure the availability of digital information. The CAR Network also distributes a newsletter, Nexus. Nexus provides information about CAR, the latest CAR techniques, and updates of the CAR networks activities.
In addition to the many CAR organizations, there are a great deal of websites offering valuable resources to journalists. The Beat Page at www.reporter.org/beat/ has many links to databases according to specific beat areas.
The computer assisted research and reporting page, located at argo.net.aulshauna/marks.htm, is similar to The Beat Page. This site has a list of political and government sites, as well as police and crime statistic databases. The Poynter Institute has a fantastic site for a beginner. The site which can be found at www.facnet.org/report_tools/CAR/carvalue.htm lists specific sites which might be helpful at each stage of the reporting process. Finally, MEGASOURCES at www.ryerson.ca/journaVmegasources.html is a one stop shop with a selection of links to many different types of directories, databases, search engines and gateways.
Conclusion
Computer assisted reporting is one of the best public services news organizations can provide their readers, listeners, or viewers. It gives journalists an opportunity to go beyond what three people say about a topic and gives validity to hunches journalists may have about a topic. Based on from what we've seen on the web, news organizations are very proud of the positive changes resulting from their report.
For example, the Miami Herald's cops series resulted in 36 officers being reprimanded, and five of those being demoted. That's quite an impact, especially now that this misuse of taxpayer money will cease.
CAR doesn't need to take several months to complete. Some stories
can be done in one day. The task doesn't have to seem daunting
in order to be effective. If you have the tools to do this type
of work, use them. There's been several that have won Pulitzer
prizes.
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Team 2 Ce'on Barnes Tracy Potocki Terra Tham
On July 11-13th of 1997, a computer-assisted reporting seminar was scheduled at New York University. The overview of this seminar was to provide hands on training for journalists interested in a more in depth way of reporting.
The workshop was designed to help participants gain numerous skills such as: exploring the interment, using spreadsheets, databases, obtaining government information, as well as building your own databases.
On the 11th, the workshop started by explaining what is being done now for CAR. Next there was a segment on WEB searching. Finally the rest of the day dealt with spreadsheets.
The second day started with learning about database managers. Next was a segment on examining government records. Last there was a session on building your own databases.
Day three consisted of a session on importing data followed by exercises on databases, Internet, spreadsheets, and a discussion dealing with the use of CAR on the job.
This workshop should be looked upon as instructional because it showed participants how to do things with a computer that they would otherwise not dream of doing. It helped one to learn about CAR as an up and coming trend on the rise in the field of journalism. The information for this seminar was found at:
www.ire.org/resources/conferences/training/otr/newyork
There was another site on the Internet that dealt with CAR stories. This site told of different events in which CAR was involved. One story involved a parking scam that the Seattle Times was able to topple.
Another story involved slumlords. The CAR methods used by one journalist found one of the slumlords to be a state senator.
What we basically got from this site is that there are many stories that can be unfolded through CAR. The stories all dealt with scams and how they were traced through databases. This tells one as a reader that records and data are all put on computer and one only has to ask in order to obtain important information. This site was found at:
htCp://20G.G3G2.50/carwash/ideas.html
The University of Miami has a computer-assisted reporting research site that is also the website for the school's Journalism and Photography classes. There are links to the classes offered by the university that use CAR or CAR techniques.
The site is supervised by Dr. Bruce Garrison, and is updated frequently. The majority of the site discusses the CAR research that Dr. Garrison has been involved in at the University of Miami since 1993. Dr. Garrison included links to information about his books as well as many other websites relevant to CAR and his research. Also included are links to other research papers that have recently been published on the Web.
Dr. Garrison attends and often speaks at many CAR and journalism-related meetings, workshops and seminars. The website includes links to recent articles and news from these meetings that pertains to computer-assisted reporting. This page is most helpful in explaining what CAR is and who is using the technique.
Another CAR site which contains many areas of information that would be useful to journalists is Matt Reavy's CAR Links page. The site is broken down into four major areas which helps narrow down your area of interest. This is a good starting place for finding resources on a story or to brush up on journalism or Internet searching skills.
There is a page that contains links to CAR newsletters, organizations and news sites which publish CAR articles on the Web. There are also a few university CAR sites linked to this page (however, Miami's is not listed).
The last section contains links to many sites where one can obtain data and databases over the Internet. The Government Data on the Web page links to agricultural, aviation census, economic/financial, education, election, health, and miscellaneous data sites.
Another page that contains many useful links to information found over the Internet is Shaun Anthony's site at argo.net. This site was created for journalists in Australia to find CAR information and many of the linked sites are Australian. The existence of this site proves how widespread computer-assisted reporting has become.
The most interesting page on this site was the Reference Material page. It contains links to many useful and interesting sites to search the Web for information, including online encyclopedias and dictionaries. Links to several databases in Europe and the States are also included.
Upon instituting a computer-assisted reporting web search through Excite I came upon many information offering, sites one of which was the Nicar organization's, the National Institute for Computer-Assisted Reporting, web page (http://www.nicar.org/data/).
This was a most interesting site consisting of cataloged data bases available for purchase. Information on anything from uniform crime reports (FBI data) to workplace safety reports (OSHA data) can be ordered. There's an order form with prices listed by market size where a one year subscription rate for monthly updates on FEC campaign contributions 1991-1998 cycles is most expensive.
I also found an extremely helpful CARR site (http:www.tdo.infi.net/~dgallo/jrnlsm/CARR.htm) with links to CARR associations/education courses like the Ryerson Institute for comp-assisted reporting, and NYU CAR course taught by Sullivan, a NW Missouri State Car course with Strauch. There are links to CARR texts, CARR stories? CARR discussion groups like CARR-L - an active list for computer-assisted reporting and research. Other links include resource/library gateways, journalism/sources gateways? and database managers and databases. The main index of the site also offers a link to a megasources page where once can locate someone's email address, the best phone directories online, and the best mailing lists. There are links to search indexes like
Metacrawler and HotBot and Excite. One can jump to politics/government/law/crime/courts/police/gateways or perhaps if one rather to health/medicine/sci-tech/environment gateways.
Each site was filled with helpful information or links to sites
where one could get that information. Until now I never realized
just how much data was out there or how widely practiced computer-assisted
reporting is.
Team 3 Angi Adams Anne Pollpeter Jason Rossi
Searching the web for computer-assisted reporting information was extremely easy. Much information regarding computer-assisted reporting was found. This information ranged from institutes that teach CAR, institutes that teach CAR on-line with references and resources, to organizations supporting some aspect of CAR, and on-line publications. Many organizations support some aspects of CAR. As suspected, many of these organizations are journalism oriented in some way or another. In the same respect, on-line publications were also found. These on-line publications or many of them have stories which have run in newspapers or on television. They are used as examples of what can be accomplished with CAR.
Many of the organizations which support CAR include these four: IRE, AJR, Poynter on-line and the Ryerson Institute for CAR. IRE (Investigative Reporters and Editors) had a link to NICAR (National Institute for Computer-Assisted Reporting) at Missouri School of Journalism. IRE and NIGAR offer training for computer-assisted reporting. This training is local or on the road. The AJR (American Journalism Review) had a list serve for people who want or need help with a story. Examples of this include help finding information or questions regarding use of the Internet.
Poynter on-line is another organization that supports computer-assisted reporting. Poynter has many on-line links to on-line publications. Ryerson Institute for Computer-Assisted Reporting, in Canada was the most helpful found of all the organizations. Ryerson lists various databases, has indexes and the best databases on the Internet.
On-line publications found on the Internet were scattered, but two organizations that support CAR were found to have links to on-line publications. These two, Poynter Research Center and IRE on-line, featured different publications. Poynter had many books about the Internet and how to use it for a person's advantage. Examples of these on-line books included: "Computer-Assisted Research: A Guide to Tapping On-line Information," "Computer-Assisted Journalism Training in U.S. schools," "Disaster Coverage: Internet Resources" and "Top 38 List of Excuses Government Agencies Give for Not Being Able to Fill Your Data Request (And suggestions on what you should say or do)."
IRE, on the other hand, had computer-assisted reporting projects that included 32 different stories form all over the country. States represented in this included: Maryland, North Carolina, Florida, Michigan, Indiana, California, Georgia, Pennsylvania and Texas. Another site found that had on-line publications included, CAR Class Information from the University of New York. This site had links to investigative stories from The Miami Herald, The Palm Beach Post, two stories from The Baltimore Sun and recent television shows from "Frontline."
Computer Assisted Reporting is becoming extremely crucial to journalists as a tool for gathering vast amounts of information for investigative stories. More and more universities are offering CAR courses in their journalism schools so students can master this significant skill and apply it to their own work. CAR classes are standard for mast journalism schools, but the course information is usually not posted on the world wide web. Only a few schools put the syllabus, or any information, on the web. However, the magnitude of CAR sites is awesome. Even with the few university sites, one can already gather the expanse that CAR sites cover.
Columbia University in New York offers links to many sites on one of its library pages. Though it gives no class information, one can only assume that a school as prestigious as Columbia offers CAR classes. Its web page contains connections to other web pages that give great detail of CAR resources and information, which in turn offer endless links to university pages and information about GAR seminars. The simple fact that Columbia's page gives access to CAR sites is an example of how large the hunger for CAR information is.
New York University also has a site produced by a teacher that contains a course syllabus for On-line Investigative Reporting. The course was set up much the same way as our CAR class, with assigned class projects and smaller assignments. the course objectives are much the same: "You will learn the basics of investigative reporting but from the perspective of the new information age." The course objectives also state that a prime goal is to learn how to access databases and retrieve the information. The course at NYU is devised the same as our ciass, to achieve the same goals that will teach the students how to gain expert status in the field of CAR.
Bruce Garrison at the University of Miami wrote the forward to a book and posted it on a web page. Garrison stresses the importance of learning how to use computers in the journalistic field to coincide with the forthcoming millennium. He describes the great leaps journalism has already made in the electronic era, and only stresses how competitive it could become. The book Garrison wrote the forward for explains how Internet and computer skills will be crucial for all journalists in the future.
Many universities do not post class information for public display, but just from the school-sponsored sites, one can see the importance that is being placed on CAR skills in higher education. Considering the competition for journalism jobs in the future, learning CAR skill is necessary, and luckily' universities are committed to making sure their students get that experience.
Computer-assisted reporting has many aspects to it that journalism students need to learn. One of the main aspects of the course is to figure out where to get information for a story to report. One main source that journalists today use, is databases off of the Internet. Databases are vast and vary widely in the type of information that can be found. Some databases are free for public domain and others are protected unless it is subscribed to. It is not hard to find them though.
Just typing in the word "databases" in keyword search many different topics were found to choose from. The first thing that came up was a web page called The Database Resource Center. It had a hot list of the top ten databases to look up information. This site had plenty of database tools and techniques for journalists to utilize.
Other web sites iead you through a maze of links and pages, more that can be imagined on any one topic. Looking up "crime reports" sent me into so much information it was hard to choose what to look for. Databases can be useful but in many cases it helps to have a specific area in mind to look up before you start wandering through them.
Along with databases on the web, journalists can keep in touch with other database gatherers by using message boards that are set up to post and retrieve messages to and from other database buffs. Other general test areas include the Resource Center News, to keep people up to date on database developments on-line, and the Database Bookshelf, to give you a list of many third party database books, book/disk sets, and magazines. If you're new to working with databases, you can even check out Beginner's Data Basics-the place to start if you need some background in database terms, concepts, and products.
So many dimensions to learn about on the web about CAR it is
hard to know which direction to begin. A person can find anything
from classes on CAR in and out of universities to learning about
software programs available to make CAR easier to understand.
Depending on what you're looking for, with as much information
on the web about CAR as there is, you could have a hard time searching
for the perfect thing.
Team 4 Tracy Bushman Jaime Paton Eric Solomon Peter Thompson
The meanings and functions of Computer-Assisted Reporting are as varied as the organizations and universities that support it. For many universities and news organization teaching classes in CAR is one of the only way to train journalists and make them more accountable for the facts in their stories. It is also one way to make stories more wide reaching and applicable to people who are bombarded by multimedia images and numbers everyday but have no way of putting them in perspective. Online CAR publications and organizations see it as a necessity for any journalist. Not that a knowledge of CAR will separate the good journalists from the bad but it opens up whole new areas of reporting. With these applications in mind, many organization are doing everything in their power to provide journalists with the necessary databases, lists, and material to make CAR a viable alternative to rote reporting. Many organizations are even lobbying for freedom of information laws that would make obtaining databases and other tools easier for journalists to obtain.
Many universities offer Computer-Assisted Reporting as a class in their journalism program. Universities such as University of Miami, Virginia Commonwealth University, University of North Carolina, New York University, University of Southern California, University of Florida and Northwest Missouri State offer courses in, or related to, computer-assisted reporting for journalism students.
There are also other educational courses offered in computer-assisted reporting. Missouri School of Journalism offers week-long training programs. They offer seminars through NICAR (National Institute for Computer-Assisted Reporting). There is a workshop on Monday, August 3 that runs through Wednesday, September 2 at Atlanta, Georgia. The next workshop is offered from September 17-19 in Chicago through the Medill School of Journalism and works with hands-on exercises that focus on tapping into government databases. Other institutes that are just getting started, including the Ryersen Institute for Computer-Assisted Reporting in Canada (RICARC) can also be found on the web and plan to offer training courses. If interested in training classes offered through NICAR or RICARC, students may sign up for them over the web.
Some universities such as Washington State, have their own web-site devoted to computer-assisted reporting. Web-sites like this one are set up find help with stores, get story ideas, share experience and find information.
Many of the universities found on the web that offer courses in computer-assisted reporting included the course syllabus, and a description of the course. From the web search, I learned that there are many universities that offer courses in or related to computer-assisted reporting. There is also numerous amount of web sites designed around CAR. The web site we used to locate other universities offering courses in Car was www.ryerson.ca/~dtuder/career.htm This web site included, among various other items, a list of universities and institutes that offered educational training or courses in Computer-Assisted Reporting.
Although universities have several sites on Computer-Assisted Reporting, there are only a few on-line publications that address CAR. Two such online publications are "CARJA, Computer-Assisted Reporting and Analysis at 77'e Philadelphia Ir~quirer" and "Uplink", NICAR's monthly newsletter. These sites introduce you to the basics of Car when dealing with financial information databases by learning how other journalists analyzed the computerized information.
"Poynter Online," a site produced by the Poynter Institute, is another site that offers articles on CAR and CAJ, computer assisted journalism. This site is a research center for Car that has articles on CAJ training in U. S. schools, CAR links on where to go for information on and off the Internet and other articles by reporters that use CAR.
There are many organizations that support some aspect of CAR. Some organizations work at supplying journalists the necessary databases to research stories. Others focus on giving journalist ideas and classes on how to manage the date. Still others post lists and story ideas for journalists. Not to mention all the other newspapers, magazines, radio stations that post their published CAR stories on the web but may not be focused on assisting journalists in obtaining data or story ideas per SE.
Still other organizations such as IRE (Investigative Reporters and Editors) support all aspects of CAR. IRE is hosting the National CAR Conference March 11-14 in Boston. The also have a web site which can access IRE's special libraries, including its research center, valuable handouts and tipsheets from seminars and conferences and NICAR database library.
NICAR is a program of IRE and the Missouri School of Journalism. It was founded in 1989 to provide both training and data for reporters who wanted to use government databases and other electronic resources to do better stories.
The Crime Time Publishing Company had its own web-page with tons of investigative links to sites and databases. The motto of the company is "The ultimate source for inside information." It even had special section on journalism links to other organizations such as IFJ. The International Federation of Journalists has produced an extensive policy document called Access and Pluralism in the Information Society It welcomes the advantages of the information superhighway as well as address issues of freedom of access to information as one aspect of CAR.
Editor an Publisher Interactive has market guides and web lists on line. Plus it offers publication databases for a fee. Other groups such as EFF or Electronic Frontier Foundation work to fight censorship online and offer huge archives and list of CAR generated stories. Another group with archives of CAR stories is FAIR (Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting) which is a national media watch group which offers well documented criticism in effort to correct media bias and imbalance. FAIR actually uses CAR journalism against many newspapers and news agencies.
The Center for Investigative Reporting is the only non-profit tax-exempt news organization in the United States established to do investigative reporting. On its webpage it says, "Learn how to practice the gentle art of muckraking. Become a public records expert." The web site includes helpful hints on how to deal with public records as computer records.
The Fund for Investigative Journalism also gives grants to freelance reporters to help with stories. In the past this organization has given grants for CAR generated stories, such as one on environmental pollution and abnormal numbers of cancer illnesses and deaths in a county.
In searching the web for resources for computer-assisted reporting, we though we would have a hard time finding links to databases for the purposes of journalism instead of academics. We were pleasantly surprised at what we found.
The keyword search guided us to many sites devoted to Car, first the Knight-Ridder Newspapers site had a page devoted to CAR. You can research articles that appeared in KnightRidder papers derived from databases.
One such story was about college sports and what colleges spend money on since Title XIX came to be. There are also sites to lists of political campaign donators. This site was full of completed stories and had few links to databases but great ideas for stories.
The Washington Computer-Assisted Reporting site is devoted to journalists, specifically journalists looking for story ideas using CAR. This site contains links to other organizations with resources for computer-assisted reporting.
The mother load of resources for us who want to use computer databases for stories is at the web site of the National Institute for Computer-Assisted Reporting. NICAR is strictly focused on resources for journalists. We counted links to 21 separate databases at the NICAR home page including databases of the Federal Aviation Administration like service records, difficulty reports, accidents and incidents, airmen directory and an aircraft registry.
There is a link to a NASA database on their air safety reporting system, as well as links to the FBI, FEMA, OSHA, the DOT, AFT, and the National Bridge Inventory System. NICAR plans to add links to nine more sites in the future such as the INS and the USDA.
NICAR also has something brand new at its site, a list of on-line CAR projects and lists of stories and projects that are the cream of the crop. Journalists and students can access this site for inspiration for a project of their own.
Another site, facsnet.org offers many resources; phone books, keyword searches, that lead to databases. A obviously invaluable source for any journalist.
The sites we found should be enough for any motivated journalist
to get a good start on a computer-assisted story. For a database
is just the tip of the iceberg, the real work is finding a meaningful
and interesting story out of the endless databases.
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