Finding the military's problem doctors took a year for a veteran reporter. Finding problem roads and out-of-town campaign contributors took some computer-assisted reporting novices just a few days.
In October the Dayton Daily News published a series on how the military can hire unlicensed and unqualified doctors, and how they are rarely held accountable for errors. The series was picked up in papers coast-to-coast and on TV's "20/20."
Reporter Russell Carollo, a computer-assisted reporting veteran, spent more than a year finding and acquiring military and state medical databases, then cleaning them and creating more of his own.
The result was another chapter in the paper's history of long, comprehensive CAR projects. But until recently databases hadn't been a part of regular news coverage, and only a handful of reporters had the know-how.
In July the paper set a goal of getting more computer-assisted work into smaller projects and everyday reporting.
The first step was hiring me, to have a newsroom CAR resource. That role entails some heavy lifting, teaming up with reporters on projects, and general cheerleading on computer use.
The second step was bringing in a veteran for some basic training.
My background is on PCs and this is a Mac shop, so Griff Palmer of The Daily Oklahoman came in for a three-day Boot Camp.
He ran four reporters through some basic training, and then he and I worked on advanced SQL for data cleaning and table-building.
Using CAR every day
With only an occasional pointer, schools reporter Lynn Hulsey has been using Excel and FoxPro in much of her everyday work. Last week she used Excel to analyze the differences between education plans proposed by the governor, Senate and House.
In September, we imported state proficiency test data. She analyzed it for a next-day story, then did more analyses for a weekender.
Now, with several tables built, she uses it as a resource in daily work.
Next step: Linking test performance data with spending data.
City hall reporter Laura Bischoff wanted to check tips about the police department's response time to 911 calls. She negotiated for the dispatches - 53,000-plus of them - and we imported them from a nine-track tape.
That analysis only led to another question, one that requires the record of all received calls. We expect to receive those records in December.
But as we worked on that project, the interim campaign finance reporting deadline arrived in the mayoral race.
We had nine days to analyze the records before the election.
In the past, the paper had not tried to do more than a cursory analysis. This year, we went for a broader story.
Laura, one of the more computer-savvy reporters, built her own database structure. With help from clerks, we inputted the bulk of some 1,400 records. In four days we had turned a story in four days showing how money from affluent suburbs figured in the race.
Finding the trends
Trends reporter John Keilman and I wanted to look at crime patterns in Dayton and some two dozen nearby cities and towns. So we put FBI UCR data and Census population figures into Excel, and assembled per-capita and percentage change tables for the region.
That sparked John's interest, so he sought out traffic accident data on a rapidly growing adjacent county.
We downloaded the 25,000 records from a state FTP site, then imported it into FoxPro.
With some careful sorting and traditional reporting he was able to pinpoint some trouble spots and surpass the findings in a state report that came out just as we finished the project.
Two investigative reporters, Jim Bebbington and Steve Bennish, already had some database experience.
But the three-day in-house boot camp has them aggressively pursuing major state databases for projects.
Business reporter Mike Drummond also soloed on a project using FoxPro to figure CEO salaries. Even some longtime reporters are seeing the trend and getting information off the Web faster than they could get it otherwise.
As the year ends, that's at least a half-dozen projects finished or nearly so, and they've resulted in everyday reference tools for various beats.
The Dayton Daily News is fortunate to have good technical resources.
But the key to our progress was in people. We brought in a pro to teach, creating some enthusiasm and showing a commitment to CAR.
We have a point man to help reporters past sticky problems and point them to resources and ideas, and who has learned enough to train more reporters in the basics.
Most important, we gave people some time to learn and practice. It didn't keep them from working: No reporter took a whole day off.
But they got at least half-day blocks over a few days, time for them to develop and practice skills.
And as they begin to turn more routine stories into full-fledged quick projects, more of their colleagues are going to be looking to them for pointers, or maybe looking for a training session of their own.
Dave Gulliver can be reached by e-mail at Dave_Gulliver@coxohio.com