Tapping a world's worth of information via the Internet. Adding depth and perspective to stories by analyzing data. Probing how governments spend tax dollars and how laws are enforced. Those were the objectives my editor Virginia Demaree and I set for starting CAR at The Free Lance-Star in Fredericksburg, Va. The idea was to get someone in the newsroom comfortable enough with spreadsheets, databases and Internet searches so that other reporters would be able to apply technology to their beats. Considering we used calculators to figure election results last fall, this was a worthy goal. Here are some of the stories that have resulted:
Chasing Data
Police reporters seemed to be writing an increasing number of high-speed chase stories last year. The pursuits often ended in injury-causing crashes and several suspects died. Based on those observations, I set out looking for data on police pursuits. Working with cop reporters, we quickly found out that only some local police and sheriff's departments had electronic records and even then the information was insufficient for comparison.
So I built a database of 65 chases from stories in our clip files. Using Lotus Approach (an easy database for first-timers), I constructed 25 information fields, and from that I was able to determine trends. Our findings: Police initiate chases for minor infractions a majority of the time, most drivers who flee are under 25 and chases typically end in crashes.
By examining state police and local figures, we also found that National Transportation Safety Board fatal accident statistics undercounted the number of deaths in Virginia in one of the years we examined.
Police in the Fredericksburg area haven't rewritten pursuit policies, but the stories and a follow up have prompted debate.
Cop and dollars
Localities in our area between Washington, D.C., and Richmond face similar problems with crime. Yet there's wide disparity in the amounts of money spent on law enforcement among the city of Fredericksburg and neighboring Stafford and Spotsylvania counties. Using an Excel spreadsheet, we compared law enforcement budgets and the number of cops on the street in each locality. In a story published in April, we showed that Spotsylvania County spends the least on law enforcement, though it's one of the fastest growing counties in Virginia. Spotsylvania officials are now in the process of hiring additional deputies.
Concern about crime has been on the rise. Spotsylvania was the scene of an abduction and murder of a teen-age girl last year. In May, two young sisters were abducted and murdered. Like the earlier case, their bodies were found in an adjacent county. The cases have drawn national attention and concern there's a serial killer at work.
After the May slayings, we used spreadsheets to analyze violent crime statistics and homicide rates in the region. The stories provided context for the unusual cases.
Educational effort
Where does all money for area schools go? How much gets to the classroom?
Those were the basic issues examined in an analysis of instructional expenditures over a seven-year period.
Education Kiran Krishnamurthy and I put the data into spreadsheets. We found one county, which had a reputation for its school system, had fallen behind a neighboring county in per pupil expenditures. The reason: the system known for its schools had to put more into building schools to cope with growth while the other had increased classroom spending.
The story challenged long-held perceptions about which systems were getting dollars into the classroom.
Overall, our focus is local.
We want to examine issues that make a difference in the lives of people who live in the community. We try never to forget that behind the Census numbers, government expenditures or the crime rates, there are real people with stories to tell.
Jim Toler can be reached at (540) 374-5416, or by e-mail at jimtoler@flstarweb.com/