Everyone's heard about the computer-assisted story that rocked city hall. But what if you prefer physics to politics? As science writers around the country are discovering, the right computer data can bring perspective, insight and scope to stories large or small.
Toxic chemical stories
Reporters from the Bee newspapers in Fresno, Modesto and Sacramento recently used computers to analyze the amount and location of toxic chemicals in California's Central Valley. Their six-month investigation resulted in the series "Dirty Air," which appeared in the Fresno Bee in early November, 1993. The series illustrated how tons of agricultural pesticides are released in central California every year, adding to the Valley's already severe air pollution.
Reporters Chris Bowman, Russell Clemings and Alvie Lindsay discovered that more than 130 million pounds of toxic pesticides and industrial chemicals were released in the area in 1990. By analyzing data on 9-track tapes from the California EPA's Pesticide Use Report and the federal EPA's Toxic Release Inventory, they also determined where the largest releases of the most toxic chemicals occurred.
Clemings came up with the idea in the mid '80s after he discovered the California pesticide database. "I thought it would be nice to take that data and sum up the amount of pesticide out there. But it was too big a task for a PC at that time it was a database of mind-boggling size."
The reliability of the California records, which included only the most toxic pesticides, also was a barrier. But in the late '80s state legislators increased the number of regulated chemicals, making the records more comprehensive.
By 1993, a more advanced computer system and editorial support for an investigative project also were in place. Armed with a new IBM 486, the California team was ready to go.
Instead of summarizing pesticide amounts, the reporters decided to rate each chemical by its LD-50 value, a standard toxicity measure.
"They shovel pesticides into mice until half are dead, and then call that the LD-50," Clemings said. "It wasn't perfect, but toxicologists said that something toxic by an oral route was probably toxic by an inhalation route."
With the help of Foxpro software, they discovered the 10 most common toxic chemicals in the Valley's air, the 10 primary sources of those chemicals and the 10 areas that were most affected. Bowman, Clemings and Lindsay also created a full-page color map, enabling readers to identify the major toxins in their communities.
The study found the farming industry was responsible for many of the toxic hot spots, the majority of which were on the east side of the Central Valley, adjacent to growing cities. Although state legislative reaction to the series was lukewarm, Clemings said he is always ready for similar computer-assisted stories.
"Knowing what I know now, this would take about one month or six weeks - the computer analysis part," Clemings said. "There's lots of data on the environmental beat. Those agencies generate data better than they clean up the environment."
Federal and local databases such as the EPA's Toxic Release Inventory can be a gold mine for journalists, often providing information for numerous stories. But federal and state computer records are just the beginning.
University medical school stories
Universities, corporations and non-profits all keep important data in electronic form the type of thing that can make or break a story. That is, if you can get it.
When Maura Lerner and Joe Rigert of the Minneapolis Star Tribune decided to investigate their local university's medical school, they found out just how difficult it can be to take on a local sacred cow.
"In the beginning, they gave us quite a bit of stuff, but after the first article they closed up," Rigert said. "We had to fight for everything we got."
One of the few items they acquired without legal pressure was a pile of computer disks containing information on thousands of university research projects.
"We got disks with all the research grants for five years," Rigert said. "They included dates, money involved, titles of researchers, principal and secondary investigators."
"Using that, we were able to get all sorts of breakdowns on what companies certain professors were getting money from, what companies were doing lots of research at the university," he said. "Every conceivable variation, it was all there."
The disks, which Lerner and Rigert analyzed using Paradox database management software, added significantly to the two-year investigation. "Money vs. Mission at the University of Minnesota," which ran between May 1992 and December 1993, revealed 20 years of wrongdoing in a drug program, misuse of medical-practice funds, get-rich research schemes, kickbacks and research misconduct.
The Star Tribune investigation resulted in the resignations of four top university administrators, an FBI investigation, an overhaul of the school's secretive private practice system and one conviction for fraud.
But all computer-assisted science stories need not produce dramatic results. Huge amounts of data that once existed only on paper - or didn't exist at all - now are available in electronic form. For journalists interested in the big picture, the results can be significant.