{ "id": "1997-april-power-to-the-people", "slug": "1997-april-power-to-the-people", "url": "https://dwillis.github.io/uplink/article/1997-april-power-to-the-people.html", "year": 1997, "month": "April", "monthNum": 4, "headline": "Power to the people", "kicker": "CAR Trips: First ventures", "author_name": "Janet Roberts", "author_title": "Computer Resources Editor", "affiliation": "The Morning Star", "summary": "A North Carolina newspaper used computer databases and Excel to identify and interview voters in specific precincts to gain deeper insight into a contentious school board race involving disputes over redistricting and segregation, moving beyond traditional door-knocking journalism.", "keywords": [ "journalism", "database", "voters" ], "topics": [ "Investigative Methods", "Government & Politics", "Data & Databases" ], "technologies": [ "Excel", "Paradox" ], "full_text": "When incumbent Republican school board member slugged the husband of another GOP incumbent in the parking lot after a candidates' forum, we knew last May's Republican primary election was like none we had seen before.\n\nOne faction of the New Hanover County Republican Party was calling for a redistricting plan based on neighborhood schools. So what if that would mean a return to segregation and the loss of federal money for our school system?\n\nThe county's more mainstream Republicans said they wanted neighborhood schools, too, but they weren't willing to throw out 20 years of civil rights gains to achieve them.\n\nThe Morning Star's news columns were full of daily stories about the debate. But none of those stories shed much light on the key question: How was the fight playing out with voters?\n\nOften, when newspapers want the answer to that question, they turn to old-fashioned shoe-leather journalism. You knock on doors.\n\nFor a small newspaper, the problem with that approach is the time it takes. You knock on lots of doors and you don't always find registered voters or people who are giving the election much thought. The crapshoot doesn't always result in an enlightening story.\n\nHere's where the computer came in. We thought we could use it to take some of the chance out of the process.\n\nWho we found\n\nHow did it work?\n\nIn four days' time, we found and interviewed a few dozen voters who had been following the school board race closely and had strong opinions about which side was right.\n\nWe interviewed and photographed one of two black Republicans registered in one of our target precincts. Imagine the likelihood of finding him had we just gone out randomly knocking on doors.\n\nThe story got beyond the candidates' rhetoric and painted the issues in real terms, telling of real parents with real kids in school. Their opinions of what course the school system should take likely helped other voters decide how they wanted to vote. We gave it showcase play on our Sunday cover, two days before the primary.\n\nHow we did it\n\nThis was by no means a scientific process. Rather, we used the computer to help sharpen our natural reporting instincts.\n\nExcel helped us zero in on precincts where we wanted to interview people. Paradox pinpointed voters who would make good interviews.\n\nWe decided to look for Republican precincts where voters tend to be independent-minded: They don't just flip the Republican lever; they sometimes vote for Democrats. Our theory was that these independent-minded voters probably give their decisions a lot of thought, were likely following the party dispute closely and would help turn the race for one faction or another. We also wanted precincts with a lot at stake, where kids would have to be bused to maintain racial balance in the schools.\n\nUsing simple sorts in Excel, we zeroed in on a handful of precincts that matched our criteria. We sorted first by demographics, finding the Republican-dominated precincts. Then we looked for voting trends, finding one precinct, for example, where Republicans had helped a black Democrat win the last general election.\n\nFrom the few interesting precincts we found, we decided to focus on three - a blue-collar neighborhood, a white upper-class neighborhood, and a suburb where a lot of kids are bused. This is where Paradox came in. We had a database of all registered voters in New Hanover County. It lists names, addresses, party affiliation, date of birth, sex, race. Even more helpful to our story: It tells if they voted in the past several elections and even lists some telephone numbers.\n\nFor each of the three precincts, we asked Paradox to give us a list of all the registered Republicans who had voted in the '94 primary. That eliminated the apathetic voters from the lists and gave us a better chance of landing decent interviews. I printed out these lists, and reporters Scott Whisnant, Tricia Vance and Phil Hervey took it from there, blitzing on the phones to conduct the interviews.\n\nThe follow-up\n\nWe used the same technique the day after the election for our post-primary analysis. We used Excel to find the swing precincts, and then culled lists of voters from our voter registration database in Paradox. This all resulted in a story where voters explained the outcome of the race rather than tired pundits.\n\nWhat I liked most about these stories is that they relied heavily on number crunching and data but were vastly devoid of numbers. Janet Roberts can be reached at (910) 343-2389, or send e-mail to starnews@wilmington.net", "provenance": { "extracted_by": "anthropic/claude-sonnet-4-6", "extracted_at": "2026-07-05", "verified": true }, "similar": [ { "slug": "1992-november-bush-slipped-in-suburbs", "score": 0.155 }, { "slug": "2001-novemberdecember-deciding-boundaries", "score": 0.147 }, { "slug": "2005-may-june-the-dividing-line", "score": 0.147 }, { "slug": "1992-july-the-greensboro-news-and-record-has-north-carolina-dairies-crying-over-spilt-milk", "score": 0.106 }, { "slug": "1998-march-the-conversion", "score": 0.104 } ], "html_url": "https://dwillis.github.io/uplink/article/1997-april-power-to-the-people.html", "json_url": "https://dwillis.github.io/uplink/article/1997-april-power-to-the-people.json" }