Some of our far-flung friends recently wrote us with details about their computer-assisted reporting projects. From Dick Rogers: It began with a telephone call in February to Lisa M. Krieger, the Examiner's medical writer. The caller, a health professional in town, described what he believed was waste and incompetence in the use of city, state and federal funds. The task of evaluating the 100-plus AIDS programs carried out in San Francisco was beyond our resources, but it turned out that the city was about to conduct individual evaluations of every publicly funded grant program.
The process took months. It wasn't until October that we were able to go through each file folder. There were 124 - each one containing scores on at least 11 performance categories, as well as five or more other entries and written comments. None of it was computerized. I had been doing some computer-assisted reporting over the last two years, most of it on my home PC. In September, the paper acquired a Compaq 486 with a 200-megabyte hard drive, FoxPro database software and a spreadsheet.
So the AIDS story was my first official opportunity to demonstrate the number-crunching virtues of the computer. We entered the key information into the database, adding a few fields for certain calculations we had in mind. It took about five hours. Instead of sitting down with a calculator and two big notebooks worth of numbers to look for patterns, averages and totals, we let the computer do the work.
The Compaq is a screamer - the typical sorting process was completed by the time I looked up from the keyboard to the screen. If we sorted incorrectly or failed to include an important category, it didn't matter. We just did it again. Compared to the drudgery of doing all the work by hand, the five hours spent keying the numbers was time well-spent. The result was a two-day series built around our analysis of the city evaluations.
The punch line: San Francisco has created a far-flung system of AIDS programs that often fall short of their goals and duplicate efforts, wasting money that could be used to improve services. The stories created quite a stir among AIDS groups and provided us with a follow-up story - a vow by AIDS officials to straighten out the system. If it weren't for the computer, we'd still be fiddling with the calculator and the two big notebooks of numbers.
From Brad Goldstein and Ed Achorn: For two years, reporters at The Eagle-Tribune have been using computers to explore the link between contributors and political candidates. Last fall, the computer put us on the trail of perhaps the biggest story of the campaign in a local congressional race. A local man, a former congressman, was running for the 5th district again, touting his record as a successful businessman.
When we downloaded his federal election records and sorted on business, we quickly discovered some patterns: members of New York investment firms and their wives were plowing tens of thousands of dollars into his Massachusetts campaign. One of the contributors was Robert E. Brennan, who was accused of bilking small investors of millions of dollars during the 1980s. Further research disclosed that the individual investors and their firms had links to Brennan.
Our check with state securities officials revealed that many of them were under investigation in several states on securities fraud charges. A check of reports filed by the candidate's business ties with the Securities and Exchange Commission uncovered other interesting side-lights. Brennan's First Jersey Securities had sold penny stock in the candidate's company during the '80s; a second firm whose members contributed heavily to his campaign was selling his company's stock now.
The stock sales helped the company provide a $700,000 retirement package for the candidate, although the company had had three years of losses totaling $2.8 million. We were able to give readers a broader perspective on the candidate's career as a self-made businessman. The Eagle-Tribune broke the story on the front page of its Sunday paper. The Boston Herald followed the next day with information by the candidates' opponent.