Its creators may call it "public service agate," but an Associated Press project recently demonstrated how computer-assisted reporting can strongly bolster routine election coverage.
With a lot of toil and ingenuity, Bill Dedman, director of computer-assisted reporting for AP, and Richard Mullins of the National Institute for Computer-Assisted Reporting gave AP bureaus up-to-date contribution data just before the November federal elections.
AP bureaus in every state received 25 or more reports for federal candidates in their area. The charts used different categories to sort contributions from individuals and political action committees.
For example, one chart sorted contributions by city, another by top fundraising days and yet another by special interests. Altogether, Dedman and Mullins analyzed contributions to 1,300 federal candidates. The longest chart alphabetically listed all individuals who gave $500 or more.
Mullins, an assistant professor at the Missouri School of Journalism and an academic adviser for NICAR, did the slicing and dicing of Federal Election Commission data for AP. The FEC collects and distributes contribution data for candidates.
In an intensive effort that spanned two months, Mullins developed reports on a NICAR Texas Instrument laptop-a 486-50 megahertz machine with a 200 megabyte hard-drive. He used the FoxPro database manager to sort more than 60 megabytes of data that contained 300,000 individual contributions and 128,000 PAC donations.
That was the easy part.
The more difficult challenge was making the reports suitable for conversion to standard AP agate. Mullins used the FoxPro memo field to store the appropriate headers, footnotes, and queries.
He also had to ensure that no report was longer than 130 lines. If it was, he had to split it into multiple "takes" because long files could not be used by the smaller AP members. After a report was ready, Dedman used a modem to call Mullins' computer and download the report from Missouri to New York City. (Call Mullins at 314-882-2127 or send e-mail to him at jourram@muccmail.missouri.edu for more technical details.)
"We made available to AP staff about 12,000 tables," Dedman said. "This allowed AP reporters to dive in, wade in or stick their toes in."
Dedman said almost every state AP bureau used the data for stories. For the project, AP also purchased special interest codes from the Center for Responsive Politics. Those codes identify PACs by economic or political interest because the PAC names generally offer little clue as to the industry or ideology they represent. Jacqueline Duobinis, a researcher at the National Library of Money & Politics, also assisted on the project with advice and tips. (The library is affiliated with the center.)
The effort, as Dedman and Mullins said, was a mass-produced assembly line approach that resulted in the most extensive campaign finance information and detail ever provided for AP bureaus for an election.
"It wasn't fancy, just universal," Dedman said.
Before election week was over, AP followed up the initial project with a quick analysis of the dollars spent by candidates for each vote. That analysis revealed that the most expensive winning and losing campaigns for the U.S. House and Senate.
"Oliver North spent the most money to lose a Senate seat," Dedman said. "He spent $17 a vote."
Mullins said he hopes the effort might give helpful ideas to newspapers and broadcasters trying to distribute state-wide databases to reporters in their remote bureaus. For example, some news organizations are considering writing often-used data onto CD-ROMs and giving those CDs to bureaus or reporters who take road trips frequently.
Dedman also said that the real value of this project will not be the work on election eve, but during the next Congress when it will be possible to compare a Congressman's actions with the contributions.