The real story Project misconceptions
By Joanna Kakissis NICAR staff
When Matthew Waite began his studies at the University of Nebraska at Lincoln three and a half years ago, he heard the "freshman folklore" about Malone, one of Lincoln's oldest neighborhoods.
Malone was supposedly Lincoln's ghetto, a dangerous place characterized by crime and poverty. Only the uneducated poor lived there in miserable, run-down homes, and outsiders entered its seedy boundaries at their own risk.
But after a nine-month investigation using computerized police records, Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA) data, Census data and scores of interviews, the 21-year-old college senior gave a dramatically different presentation of Malone in a Dec. 12 story in the university's student newspaper.
According to Waite's story, Malone is one of city's safest neighborhoods, ranking near the bottom in nine major crime categories when compared with eight other Lincoln neighborhoods. In addition, Malone is one of Lincoln's most ethnically diverse areas despite the common misconception that only African Americans lived there. Also, more than half of Malone residents have been to college.
Only one perception-- the area's poverty--remained as fact. Malone is Lincoln's poorest neighborhood, with a median individual income of $12,917. After an analysis of HMDA data, Waite discovered that Malone received the least amount of home-loan money of the nine neighborhoods surveyed for the story.
Waite interviewed sociologists, law enforcement officials and civic and minority leaders who alleged the area's lingering poverty was strongly related to Malone's reputation as a ghetto. Because of the inaccurate perceptions, Malone residents saw a reluctance by businesses to invest in the neighborhood, low property values and a lack of medical services.
"After I realized that the data showed Malone was not a crime-ridden neighborhood, I got the HMDA data and realized that the Malone neighborhood was suffering from the burden of misrepresentation," Waite said.
Waite first came upon the idea after meeting Malone resident Leola Bullock while he was covering an anti-death penalty rally in 1994. Bullock, an African American, had moved to Malone in 1950 because of Lincoln's racial segregation housing policies. Although she had moved from Malone in 1967, her description of it as a culturally vibrant neighborhood so contradicted Lincoln lore, Waite decided to explore the issue for an in-depth reporting class. He obtained the 1995 computerized crime records from the local police chief, loaded the 39,490 records on a Pentium 132 Megahertz with 64 megs of RAM and formatted them into the Maptitude program he had purchased for about $600.
Waite is no novice with computers. His father has been in the data processing industry for 25 years, and Waite spent summers working with his father at home in Blair, Neb.
"But this project was a huge learning curve for me," he said. "I didn't know much about data analysis or dirty data."
Initially, the computer rejected 65 percent of the police records because the addresses for the scenes of crimes had not been recorded in a standard manner by Lincoln police.
"I had to hand-check 26,000 records. It took me four months," he said.
Waite worked every day from 11 p.m. to midnight and from 3 to 4 in the morning before the address entries were consistent. After cleaning the address data, he categorized the data into nine high-profile crimes: larceny, vandalism, disturbances, robbery, burglary, miscellaneous weapons, car theft, assault and narcotics.
"When I saw the results, I noticed a pattern," he said. "Crimes thinned out when it got to the Malone neighborhood."
Waite put faces with the statistics by interviewing several Malone residents, community leaders, minority and civil leaders and law enforcement officials.
Waite calls reaction to his article "unbelievable." Last month, Nebraska's Cornhusker State Bank offered $1.5 million in low-income home guarantees to Malone residents. In addition, millions of tax revenue dollars used for community reinvestment funds are being re-evaluated.
"I didn't think a student newspaper could have this kind of influence," he said.
Joanna Kakissis can be reached at (573) 882-0684, or send e-mail to c680409@showme.missouri.edu