Bob Port, special assignments editor for the Associated Press, is ready to declare computer-assisted reporting dead-at least the term.

"The thing about the phrase 'computer-assisted reporting' is it is quickly losing its meaning," Port said. "It's like saying 'telephone-assisted reporting.' If you're doing investigative reporting nowadays, you need computers."

Port said the Associated Press soon will make computer-assisted reporting easier for all AP bureaus. The wire service currently distributes databases as best it can - mailing CD-ROMs to bureaus or doing the research in New York and sending printouts.

By the end of the year, however, that cumbersome system should change. AP is building a computer lab in its New York office that will include a Web server capable of distributing large databases. This will allow an AP reporter in Dallas to call up the latest FBI statistics, or a reporter in Oregon to check a politician's claim of lowering unemployment in the state.

"We want to make it possible for every single representative of the Associated Press to be able to look at public records electronically," Port said. "We would like them to be able to do it on deadline as much as on a project or a weekend feature."

Port, who heads a team of four writers, one researcher and a data editor, said his staff can look up several databases from their New York office, but Port wants all bureaus to be able to share in their research.

He said he hopes to have the first test databases working by March, have a few bureaus connected by the end of summer and have a national project started by the end of the year.

Philosophy change

Having these databases available at all bureaus, Port said, will allow for more "hard-edge reporting." He said reporters will be able to more accurately check claims and will be able to produce their own findings based on reports.

"That might not sound like a lot, but that's a big change for a wire service," Port said.

"They weren't accustomed to doing research here. It was pretty much grab a quote, get their name and age and put it on the wire."

Computers allow for deeper reporting, but Port said there is a big "but."

"I think we're well down the road, but computers don't write stories," he said. "Computers don't think like a skeptical reporter, and that's the other thing we need to work on - the people."

Part of that work involves freeing up reporters to be trained to use the databases that are out there. AP has already begun to incorporate more reporters in computer-assisted projects. Bureau reporters are given chances to work on investigative pieces through a rotating national writer program.

Projects and tips

Despite the challenges that AP faces, its researchers, writers and editors have produced some noteworthy investigations. The most recent was a look at a federal horse adoption program that was leading to the slaughter of thousands of wild horses. Reporter Martha Mendoza found many of the adopters who are selling their horses for slaughter are employees of the Bureau of Land Management, the federal agency in charge of the program.

Port said reporters and researchers matched employees in a federal government horse adoption title database with a database of all federal government employees to find employees who were adopting horses. They then used horse identification numbers to find which horses had been sold for slaughter. They found that 80 percent of the slaughtered horses were under 10 years old and 25 percent were under 5 years old.

Rumors of this problem have been around for a long time, Port said. "This has been going on for many years, and a lot of people have tried to do it. I don't think anyone has done it as much as we did," he said. "I think most reporters are at the mercy of who is willing to talk and under what terms, and in this case, it was nice to be able to use computer records to get at certain facts."

Port said the series took 12 weeks to produce: four weeks of backgrounding, six weeks of reporting and two weeks for editing. Other AP projects have included stories about OSHA, speed ticketing practices in New York, and Kentucky police officers ignoring overloaded coal trucks.

Port believes the AP will be able to do even more when its Web server is up and running. Port has some advice for those who are just starting to learn how to incorporate computers into daily and investigative work.

"I think I would recommend that there's a long learning curve to this, and you have to pace yourself," he said, "and since it's going to take anyone a year or two to try to figure out databases don't get too married to a given way of doing anything, because in two years the technology will change."

But this shouldn't scare off newcomers. It's still a specialty, and the kind of skills and thinking that make good writers tend to be different from the ones that make good computer operators," Port said. "It seems to be creating a new division of labor in the newsroom. We are opening new jobs, but it's for people who can do HTML pages. Journalists, committed ones, for their own protection, need to get a little savvy about this stuff."

Even AP staffers, however, have had mixed reactions to Port's push for expanding the wire service's computer capabilities.

"It's hard to generalize," he said. "Some are enthusiastic and some think it's a silly idea. I guess the results are what we'll have to wait for."