{
  "id": "1991-january-plugging-in-the-new-york-times",
  "slug": "1991-january-plugging-in-the-new-york-times",
  "url": "https://dwillis.github.io/uplink/article/1991-january-plugging-in-the-new-york-times.html",
  "year": 1991,
  "month": "January",
  "monthNum": 1,
  "headline": "Plugging In The New York Times",
  "kicker": "",
  "author_name": "Valerie Brunell",
  "author_title": "",
  "affiliation": "The New York Times",
  "summary": "The New York Times uses computer-assisted reporting to analyze large datasets, producing two major investigative stories: one examining campaign contributions to Gov. Cuomo and another analyzing the proposed NYPD expansion to determine if resources were being allocated based on crime rates.",
  "keywords": [
    "computer",
    "reporting",
    "analysis"
  ],
  "topics": [
    "Investigative Methods",
    "Government & Politics",
    "Data & Databases"
  ],
  "technologies": [],
  "full_text": "Computer-assisted reporting is still relatively new at The New York Times, but after less than six months in the works, the staff has generated two major stories that would have been otherwise impossible - one on the state's campaign contributions and the other on the proposed expansion of the New York City police force.\n\nNew York Times Database Editor John C. Freed describes computer-assisted reporting as having 10,000 monkeys sorting information for a reporter. \"The human then has to look through (the information) and say this is good and this is not,\" he says. \"It's almost an art rather than a science. You have to think about what might be a link.\"\n\nFreed's first major project involved an examination of more than $20 million in campaign contributions over the past eight years collected by New York Gov. Mario M. Cuomo. Freed updated information that had already been compiled on computer disks by a private company for the State Government Integrity Commission. To this, Freed said, he only needed to add the contributions that had been made since the commission did its report. Then his analysis began.\n\n\"Wells, Rich, Greene, the advertising agency, has a $30 million state contract for the 'I Love New York' campaign and hopes to renew the contract next March. The agency has contributed at least $42,000 to (Gov. Cuomo's) campaigns over the last eight years, including $20,000 this year,\" read the lead in the Times' Nov. 1 story written by reporter Frank Lynn.\n\nThe story also reported that \"64 of 68 engineering firms on a Cuomo list of prospects to be solicited ended up contributing to the campaign and that all but 11 of the 64 had contracts with (the State).\"\n\nAnother Times story concerning the proposed expansion of the New York police force became the newspaper's second major investigative project using computer-assisted reporting.\n\nFreed used two hard-copy reports released by the city. One report, which detailed the precincts to which the additional officers would be assigned, was scanned into the computer. The other reported types and numbers of arrests in each area and was typed-in by staff within a week.\n\nThe reports were then cross-referenced to see whether the areas with higher crime rates and more violent crimes were getting increases in officers. This was not always the case, as the computer analysis showed.\n\nThe report required six weeks' work - about three for Freed's analysis and three for interviews by Times' reporter Ralph Blumenthal. The story ran Dec. 15, the day after the State Legislature postponed approving the expansion plan at its last session because members didn't know exactly where the 9,700 additional patrol officers were to be placed.\n\n\"One Staten Island precinct, the 123d, which already enjoys the city's best police coverage for violent crime - about 85 officers for every 100 reported violent crimes - would move to an even higher ratio.\"\n\n\"At the same time, the Brooklyn North command, with some of the city's highest-crime precincts, would wind up with the lowest percentage increase of officers,\" the story read.\n\nAlthough the number of ideas for future computer-assisted investigative stories at the Times are increasing, Freed said the major projects don't go unless there's evidence that something is there. \"Computer analyses are not good for fishing expeditions.\"\n\nBut if reporters are handed a pile of documents, they need to know to ask for the tapes instead, Freed said.",
  "provenance": {
    "extracted_by": "pre-v2",
    "extracted_at": "",
    "verified": true
  },
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  "html_url": "https://dwillis.github.io/uplink/article/1991-january-plugging-in-the-new-york-times.html",
  "json_url": "https://dwillis.github.io/uplink/article/1991-january-plugging-in-the-new-york-times.json"
}