{
  "id": "1996-may-bits-bytes-and-barks",
  "slug": "1996-may-bits-bytes-and-barks",
  "url": "https://dwillis.github.io/uplink/article/1996-may-bits-bytes-and-barks.html",
  "year": 1996,
  "month": "May",
  "monthNum": 5,
  "headline": "Bits, Bytes and Barks",
  "kicker": "",
  "author_name": "",
  "author_title": "",
  "affiliation": "",
  "summary": "This newsletter highlights IRE journalism contest winners, available government census data for investigative reporting, staff promotions at NICAR, IRS criminal prosecution disparities across regions, and online resources for journalists interested in computer-assisted reporting.",
  "keywords": [
    "journalism",
    "data",
    "reporting"
  ],
  "topics": [
    "Investigative Methods",
    "Data & Databases",
    "Journalism & Newsroom"
  ],
  "technologies": [
    "CD-ROM",
    "Internet",
    "World Wide Web",
    "CompuServe"
  ],
  "full_text": "Check out the IRE contest home page\n\nRead the abstracts of the 1995 IRE contest winners and finalists. The site also includes winners going back to 1979, information on how to enter, and background on the judges for the 1995 contest. The site is at http://www.ire.org/contest\n\nData to think about\n\nYou can find more than 85,000 governmental bodies in the census of governments. In addition to states, counties, and cities, the census includes every taxing entity from sewer districts to school district to library districts.\n\nThe census looks at debt, property values, revenue and expenditures. The data includes the source of the revenue and purpose of the expenditure. There is also a directory file identifying all U.S. governmental units.\n\nThe census is conducted every five years in years ending in \"2\" and \"7.\" The most recent year for which all the data is available is 1987. However, the preliminary finance file for 1992 is available on CD-ROM from the Census bureau.\n\nTo order the data, call the Census Bureau's customer service line at (301) 457-4100 Your state data center should also offer the data, probably at a cheaper rate.\n\nNICARIANS moving on\n\nGlaston Ford, a NICAR graduate researcher, has accepted a job as a computer-assisted reporter at the Corpus Christi Caller-Times.\n\nAlso, staff member Natalya Shulyakovskaya has accepted a position with the St. Louis Post-Dispatch's computer-assisted reporting program.\n\nTaxed to the limit?\n\nTaxpayers in some American communities are at least 10 times more likely to face criminal charges from the Internal Revenue Service than those living in others, according to a new analysis of internal government records.\n\nDetailed data obtained by Syracuse University's Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC), also show that the chances the IRS will recommend criminal charges against anyone are extraordinarily remote: only 17 per million. (The FBI says you're five times more likely to be murdered.)\n\nTRAC's data is available via the web for reporters who want to do a CAR story on what's happening in their area. Reporters can download the data for individual federal districts.\n\nThe Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse is a data research organization connected with Syracuse University. The co-directors of TRAC are David Burnham, a former investigative reporter with the New York Times, and Susan Long, a professor in Syracuse's School of Management who has specialized in IRS issues for more than 25\n\nKeep up with NICAR online\n\nSubscribe to our listserv and join in as reporters talk about how to do the job better. E-mail to LISTSERV@MIZZOU1.MISSOURI.EDU In the message, on the first line, write: subscribe NICAR-L your name. To join IRE on the Internet, the instructions are the same except, on first line, write: subscribe ire-1 your name.\n\nIRE and NICAR are also accessible through CompuServe's Journalism Forum. Go to the JForum, Section 19. Also look into the IRE/NICAR files in Library 19.",
  "provenance": {
    "extracted_by": "anthropic/claude-sonnet-4-6",
    "extracted_at": "2026-07-05",
    "verified": true
  },
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    {
      "slug": "1997-decemberjanuary-bits-bytes-and-barks",
      "score": 0.374
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  "html_url": "https://dwillis.github.io/uplink/article/1996-may-bits-bytes-and-barks.html",
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}