{ "id": "1992-december-giving-credit-where-credit-is-due", "slug": "1992-december-giving-credit-where-credit-is-due", "url": "https://dwillis.github.io/uplink/article/1992-december-giving-credit-where-credit-is-due.html", "year": 1992, "month": "December", "monthNum": 12, "headline": "Giving credit where credit is due", "kicker": "", "author_name": "Dan Woods", "author_title": "Reporter", "affiliation": "The Raleigh News & Observer", "summary": "The article discusses the challenges of crediting computer-assisted reporting work in newsrooms and suggests potential solutions for fair attribution.", "keywords": [ "credit", "newsroom", "reporting" ], "topics": [ "Investigative Methods", "Journalism & Newsroom" ], "technologies": [ "spreadsheet" ], "full_text": "Now that the first part of the invasion is complete and computer-assisted reporting has a toehold in newsrooms around the country, a new question is facing editors and reporters: How do we apportion credit for computer-assisted stories? The tapeloading, datacleaning, reportwriting and spreadsheet analysis done to create computer-assisted stories straddles the technical and journalistic worlds. Some of the work may not be reporting, but most of it clearly is. As of yet, no clear trend for attribution has emerged. That the problem has arisen at all is a sign of the coming of age of computer-assisted reporting programs at newspapers across the country. In most newsrooms, reporters and editors first worry about getting a few projects into the paper, and any issues of credit are secondary. But at a growing number of newspapers, including The Dayton Daily News, The Hartford Courant, Newsday, The News & Observer in Raleigh, and the St. Louis Post Dispatch, computer-assisted reporting is enough of an everyday activity to call for a policy on how to assign credit and tell readers who did the work on a story. Possible solutions range from no credit lines at all to a special byline for data analysis. In between these two poles are tag lines at the end of stories ('Marie Smith contributed to this story'), separate boxes with attribution for the data analysis and co-bylines. The issue begs the question of why bylines are put on stories in the first place. By and large, bylines exist to show who wrote the story, who reported the story, who is responsible for its accuracy and whom readers should contact with questions and tips. If your newspaper includes bylines only to indicate the author, then no credit would be required for a data analyst, unless he or she also wrote the story. But if bylines are motivated by any of the other reasons, then some sort of credit should appear. An informal survey of newspapers revealed several approaches. At USA Today, no credit is given for routine computer analysis. On big projects or analysis so complex that the method of analysis is an important part of the story, attribution appears as part of a credit box or in the box that explains how the analysis was performed. USA Today uses this approach for its annual thrift rating story, which first appeared in 1988. Shawn McIntosh, special projects editor at the paper, said the credit boxes serve the purpose intended for them: directing readers to the right source. 'When we first did the bank analysis four years ago, the credit boxes explained who made the critical decisions,' McIntosh said. The flurry of calls from bankers who wanted to argue about the formulas used in the story came to the people who did the data analysis, rather than to the reporters, who wrote and reported the story but weren't able to explain the details of how the analysis was designed and performed. 'We're weird here because the data analysts are editors, so typically there is no credit for the editor,' said McIntosh. 'We get all the credit that editors usually get, which is not much, which is fine by me.' She added that the only time any friction over credit for a computer-assisted story had arisen was with respect to awards won for the stories. Because the data analysts weren't mentioned in the bylines, they weren't always recognized when awards were granted, which raised some hackles. This approach has two problems. The first is that data analysis is reporting. The analyst, in effect, interviews the data using report writers, database managers and spreadsheets and comes up with information that in many cases makes up the bulk of the story. Generally, the analyst works with reporters to formulate questions and then manipulates the data to answer them. 'It's the same as going into documents. It's just the same,' said Brant Houston, a reporter at The Hartford Courant who does most of that newspaper's computer analysis. Even if an editor is performing an analysis, the task is still reporting and credit should be awarded. The second problem is that although readers are the most important constituency for any newspaper, other reporters, editors and publishers read and take note of what appears underneath each reporter's byline. The 'Data Analysis' byline seems like a good solution because it describes exactly who did what. 'It's not a matter of vanity; it's not a matter of modesty. The crucial issue is that people are doing work in a new field and if credit isn't given then it will give the impression that they aren't getting journalistic work done,' said Houston. 'Here I am in a pilot program really getting things moving, and you can run into editors who aren't giving you any credit. Then upper management says 'What are they doing? We are giving them money and equipment and taking this risk. Where's the product?' Houston insists on a byline when he does a substantial amount of work on a story, and that policy has been informally adopted in The Courant's newsroom. Houston said that when he started the program of computer-assisted reporting three years ago, some editors were reluctant to grant credit because they didn't realize what was involved in the analysis 'Certainly, there are editors who think that you hit a magic button and the stuff appears with no effort at all,' said Houston. 'Editors are more sensitive to it now. It's a challenge to make people understand how much work you are really doing.' While granting a co-byline to the data analyst conveys that that person has contributed to the story, it doesn't make clear who did what. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch has addressed this issue by granting a 'Data Analysis' byline. George Landau, the investigative reporter who does most of the computer analysis at the Post-Dispatch, said that the data analysis byline was aimed at other reporters, as well as readers. 'The 'Data Analysis' byline allows readers with comments to contact the right person (and keeps me from having to pass along dozens of questionable 'tips' to my colleagues),' said Landau. 'It also announces to staffers that the story relies at least partly on computer analysis. I mean, reading such stories is one of the best ways for reporters to start thinking about what a computer can do for them.' When working on a computer-assisted story where he isn't involved in the reporting, Landau rarely takes a hand in writing the first draft. He does however insist on reading the story at least once to make sure that the information is being interpreted correctly. Here is my recommendation: At The News & Observer, we have decided to adopt a policy of granting a co-byline to those who perform the data analysis for a story. For the first two years of our program, few bylines were granted. Attribution for the data analyst, if it came at all, usually appeared in a tag line at the end of the story. The main problem with this approach is that for most computer-assisted stories the data analysis creates the story. It's not fair or accurate to acknowledge that work in a tag line, which is generally present to indicate a minor contribution to a story. The 'Data Analysis' byline seems like a good solution because it describes exactly who did what. The reporter gets the byline for the traditional work of reporting and the analyst gets credit for the analysis. I am uncomfortable with this solution for the long term, because eventually using computers to help report on stories will be routine and not worthy of special mention. The data analysis should be recognized because it is reporting, not because it involves computers. Furthermore, as newsrooms attract more and more specialists to cover abstruse fields, it will be common to have highly trained economists or literary critics on staff. Should they get 'Economic Analysis' or 'Deconstruction' bylines? I think it's better to call us all reporters, give us bylines, and be done with it.", "provenance": { "extracted_by": "pre-v2", "extracted_at": "", "verified": true }, "similar": [ { "slug": "2006-january-february-giving-proper-credit", "score": 0.421 }, { "slug": "1998-july-booming-or-busting-rising-bankruptcies", "score": 0.199 }, { "slug": "1998-july-the-week-long-bankruptcy-series-focused-on-the-following-questions", "score": 0.144 }, { "slug": "2001-septemberoctober-uplink-story-ideas", "score": 0.14 }, { "slug": "1991-october-newsroom-conflict-anything-can-and-possibly-will-go-wrong-when-too-many-dps-work-with-your-data", "score": 0.133 } ], "html_url": "https://dwillis.github.io/uplink/article/1992-december-giving-credit-where-credit-is-due.html", "json_url": "https://dwillis.github.io/uplink/article/1992-december-giving-credit-where-credit-is-due.json" }