Computer-assisted reporting magnifies everything, for good and for ill. A previously indistinguishable mess of details will suddenly zoom into focus, often revealing surprising trends. At the very least, CAR can generate solid numbers to accurately gauhge and explain already perceived trends. That's why I got into it. Veterans of CAR also had repeatedly warned me about a downside - the tedium involved in database reporting. Seeing the phenomenal results of their work, however, I was willing to endure. Still, my biggest CAR disappointment one I was not prepared for - came recently, after months of compiling a database for my first larger scale CAR project. Industrial and commercial tax abatements were the subject. They had become commonplace over the years within The News-Herald's territory of eastern suburban Cleveland. Even The News-Herald had received a big one. The property tax cuts are given by local municipalities to encourage development, retention of existing businesses and job growth. Never had the program been independently and comprehensively analyzed locally. But the individual tax cuts had been monitored on the local, county and state level since 1994. I wanted to compile the various individual reports, plug them into a spreadsheet and determine the impact of the tax cuts. How many tax dollars have been forgone? How much have businesses invested? How many jobs have been created? How much do those jobs pay? Which companies weren't living up to their promises? Unfortunately, my conclusion - after months of hard work - was that flimsy data precluded a solid evaluation. As it turned out, it wasn't a dead end. The predicament just forced a new approach to the story. I made a list of roughly a dozen interesting story angles and disparate conclusions. With the help of an insightful editor, I grouped the pieces into what would become a five-part series. The series focused on my biggest stumbling block the lack of credible data. It became a topic for the final day of the series. The series broke down this way: Ironically, one of the strongest parts of the series focused on companies that were given tax abatements to relocate. There had been 70 tax abatements granted in Lake County since the program began in 1990, forgiving more than $56 million in taxes. Most of the 70 tax breaks were to help companies expand. But of the 23 given to bring in new companies, an obvious pattern existed. Most of the relocating companies 18, to be exact moved from one local community to another. Nine of those 18 actually moved within the county. As it turned out, some communities felt they were being caught in a tax abatement 'bidding war' with their neighbors. Another emerging issue in Ohio is urban sprawl. Urban folks complain about the government investing in building new highways, sewers and other infrastructure to allow people to move out of the city. Instead, critics argue, the money should be spent to improve older urban communities. The local industrial relocations identified in the first day's story clearly followed the trend of moving outward into greener pastures literally and figuratively in terms of tax cuts. A small spreadsheet of basic Census data also demonstrated the corresponding shift in population and wealth during the past 30 years. For the final day, I tackled the issue of the slippery numbers. In monitoring the tax abatements - which are given in exchange for promises of job creation - communities often rely on annual estimates provided by the companies. The numbers were suspect. The company receiving the county's largest tax cut of $10 million, for example, was getting credit for creating 143 jobs while openly downsizing. And some companies obviously never could live up to their promises. When the raw payroll and job numbers - those that were the basis of granting the abatements - were calculated, they didn't add up. Some deals, if fulfilled, would equate to creating jobs paying an average of more than $100,000 annually, while others promised full-time jobs paying $12,000 a year.
state wouldn't be so quick to close things down."
The Washington connection
Shortly after the meeting, Cuillier called every one of the 23 newspapers in the state, speaking with reporters who were interested in obtaining and using computerized data in their publications. About 10 of the newspapers Cuillier contacted have become regular contributors to the CAR network, which Cuillier has named "CARwash." By mid-August, Cuillier plans to have a Web site with information about the network as well as a library of CAR stories done in Washington state.
"It's helped a couple of papers get rolling on using CAR in smaller stories and building up to using it in bigger projects," he said.
Joining forces in Wisconsin
Smaller newspapers face high costs and limited resources when trying to incorporate computer-assisted reporting and often don't have the money or time to fight extended public information battles. As a result, several journalists from small newspapers - and even journalists from newspaper corporations like Knight Ridder - have formed networks to coordinate CAR training and data acquisition. In Wisconsin, journalists from the Associated Press and the Wisconsin State Journal have joined forces with other state reporters and editors to acquire state data in electronic form, have a third party clean up the data and then distribute it to members of the informal CAR network in the state at significantly reduced prices.
"So far, this (consortium) hasn't had a regular meeting schedule," said Andy Hall, an investigative reporter with the Wisconsin State Journal and a founding member of the state's CAR network. "It's just been an erratic series of phone calls and faxes. But we've made progress.
"We're in the process right now of acquiring a huge database from the state department of transportation listing traffic accidents in the past seven years. Information like this could be used for anything from in-depth projects to quick hits."
Cross-country connection
That CAR methods could help enhance both spot and investigative coverage in part motivated executives at Knight Ridder news service to sponsor a CAR network for all their newspapers.
The newspaper chain currently sponsors KRICAR, the Knight Ridder, Inc. Computer Assisted Reporting Task Force.
KRICAR's coordinator, the Philadelphia Inquirer's Neill Borowski, said the task force's goal is to nurture a "big brother, big sister" program where bigger newspapers whose journalists are already trained in CAR techniques help journalists from smaller Knight-Ridder papers.
"We want to create a network where small newspapers don't feel intimidated by calling the bigger newspapers and asking questions about computer-assisted reporting and analysis," said Borowski, who heads CAR work at the Inquirer. "And so far, it seems to be working.
"About once a month, we get calls from smaller papers and journalists who want to know if we have any suggestions on subjects ranging from data analysis or to how to do certain queries."
KRICAR also operates a listserv that is accessible to all Knight-Ridder papers.
Any questions about data acquisition or analysis can be posted to this list as well, said Borowski.
An Inquirer news researcher recently used the list to distribute Uniform Crime Report data - which she had converted into spreadsheet form - to Knight Ridder newspapers. Two newspapers - one large and one small - scooped their competition because of access to that information, said Borowski.
For more information on the KRICAR, see the Web site at http://CARA.phillynews.com/KRICAR/KRICAR.html
For more information on CARwash, check out the Web site (after August 15) at http://www.wnpa.com
Access and Excel on my computer at home, where I've done a lot of the work. It's meant an incredible amount of my own time, but I don't mind too much because I'm teaching myself. Here are some of the things we have done:
Congressional campaign finance
Our biggest CAR project this year has been the campaign finance records for our three congressional districts and six state legislative districts for the 1994-96 election cycle.
Last fall, I used the American University site to download congressional data and spent many a weekend cleaning the data and checking business directories and Web sites so that I could correctly categorize them using codes listed in Larry Makinson's book, "Follow the Money," published by the Center for Responsive Politics, which has an excellent Web site.
This enabled me later to do sorts to find out how various special interest groups - health, oil and gas, etc. - gave to our congressional leaders. I did the number crunching and gave them, as well as the assignment, to the reporter who had two days to report and write his story. Our stories were quite basic because we didn't have enough time to analyze the data and question some of the donations.
State campaign finance
Getting the data for the state representatives was more involved because Michigan's election data are not online. It all had to be typed and categorized.
We used information found at the FECInfo page (www.tray.com), looking up all of the over $200 contributors by ZIP code and sifting through the information for anyone who gave more than $5,000. This provided not only an interesting story, but the beginning of a better understanding of the politics and business of our coverage area.
We also have downloaded state health statistics, school proficiency scores and EPA Toxic Release Inventory figures for in-depth reports. I also have all of the 13-county demographic information on disk in Excel files, plus area tax base statistics obtained from county equalization offices and area construction permits obtained from county building departments.
My long-term goal for all this information is to build a front-end system and get it networked into our newsroom computers so that our reporters can easily use it without having to understand all the ins and outs of Access and Excel. I am in the process of learning how to do that now, using Baltimore Sun's electronic news editor Mike Himowitz's front-end tutorial, which I downloaded from his site (http://www.clark.net/pub/mikeh/mike/car.htm). In order to do this, I've needed to learn more of the intricacies of Access, so I am currently going through the Que Access 95 Tutor book and CD.
Tips
If you are from a small newspaper and want to learn CAR, here are some things that will help:
A real desire to learn CAR and a willingness to spend lots of your own time and possibly even some of your own money. I attended the week-long NICAR boot camp at the University of Missouri in May 1996. Though our editor and publisher are supportive of CAR, I had to pay for it myself because there is little money for training. Have patience, but be diligent. You can't learn everything overnight, but you have to keep at it. Learn what is in front of you and the next part will make itself clear to you. When I started out, I surfed a lot, finding and bookmarking sites that would be good research sources for data, reporting projects and editorials. If you don't have it, get good spreadsheet and database manager software on a computer with Internet access. I got Access and Excel because our office word processing is Microsoft Word and our systems people were most familiar with that. Get on the NICAR listserv and monitor it daily. Find other CAR sites that explain some of the basics. In addition to the handouts page at NICAR's site (http://www.nicar.org), I've learned a lot at these sites: Mike Himowitz's Home Page (http://www.clark.net/pub/mikeh/mike/mikehome.htm), the Detroit Free Press training tips page (http://www.freep.com/jobspage/academy/intel.htm), CAR/CARR (http://www.ryerson.ca/~dtudor/carcarr.htm).
Loraine Anderson can be reached at (616) 933-1468, or by e-mail at loraine@traverse.com