If you put a gun to my dog's head and forced me to write one of those movie comparison leads, it would probably read something like this: CAR at the Press is like "Field of Dreams" - If you build it, they will come.

In the last two years we developed a computer-assisted reporting program that is accessible to everyone. We have open access to NEXIS, CompuServe, Internet and America On-line. Anyone who wants to get involved with CAR can learn at their own pace. We have held several Internet classes, and this summer, we trained 19 staffers during a week of intensive CAR classes. We have installed 486/66 computers in each of our six bureaus, and at our sister paper, The Home News. The staff has access to FoxPro, Excel and Mosaic. SPSS for Windows and Atlas GIS are currently limited to one system because of software costs.

The Press' program is broken into two areas: projects of a state or national interest, and those dealing with local issues.

To understand our computer-assisted reporting program, you have to understand the Press' news area. We cover 83 towns in two counties. New Jersey has a strong home rule charter, which means most of the information we need is kept only at the municipal level.

There is no state or county agency that collects tax information or police records for us. In order to provide context for any regional story, we have to negotiate with 83 bureaucrats, all of whom have a different interpretation of the state's vague and anemic Open Public Records Act.

The only way to keep track of all that information is with PCs. In early 1994, we decided to take a look at delinquent property taxpayers in one county. The municipal reporters collected printed tax lists from each town and we had clerks build our own database of deadbeat taxpayer information.

Four months and 50,000 names later, we ran a two-day, eight-part series. We not only outline the damage delinquent taxpayers were doing to the tax base, we also named names: a state judge, two political kingmakers (including the GOP's former national finance chairman) and an assortment of local and county politicos.

Other stories we have done include: - Finding that the dead were still voting in one county, - Discovering that the governor's hiring freeze was anything but a freeze. - Exploring the world of sexual deviancy via the Internet and local bulletin boards. The resulting article ran on our Health page. - Showing that the state's crime rate hasn't changed in the last 10 years, despite a plethora of mandatory-minimum prison sentence laws and billions of dollars in new prison instruction.

Perhaps the greatest hurdle at the Press is not money or management support, but what I call the "15-Minute Syndrome." This is when a reporter, coat in hand, asks you to show him or her how to do CAR in 15 minutes.

Staffers have learned to use NEXIS for quick research, but there is a reluctance by many staffers to get involved with databases and spreadsheets that may take more than a day to examine. I have yet to hit upon a way to get staffers involved with intense CAR on a regular basis.

As a result, many of the above stories were written by Rick Linsk and myself, or in conjunction with other staffers. What I have seen is a generation gap-new staffers who have come to the Press in the last year are using the PCs more frequently than staffers who have been at the paper longer.

To remedy this situation, I hope that a series of intensive, week-long training classes next year will close the gap and fulfill our "Field of Dreams"-reporters flocking to personal computers.

-Paul D'Ambrosio is CAR Coordinator at the Press. He can be reached by phone at (908) 922-6000, ext. 4261, or via e-mail at pmd@app.com.