Sit down. Relax. Take a deep breath. Now, search the recesses of your mind for that perennial favorite children's story about the little blue engine. Remember what he said: "I think I can. I think I can" all the way up the hill and "I thought I could. I thought I could" all the way down. For small newspapers everywhere, this must be your mantra for introducing CAR to your newsrooms. Immediately banish from anyone's thinking the notion that CAR is strictly for big papers or big projects. It is a tool that every reporter and editor in every newsroom can use every day if they approach it just like the little blue engine: You have to think you can do it and look for the opportunity, no matter how small it may seem. That has been our approach at the Oshkosh Northwestern, a 24,000 circulation daily in Wisconsin, and it is an approach that has worked exceptionally well. Our reporters use CAR skills on an almost daily basis, often without knowing they are doing it. Most of the time, the application is small, but it prepares our reporters for tackling the big project when it comes along. They are comfortable with using CAR and believe that they can. Here's how we have done it.
Starting simple
It started out really as an effort to make life a little easier and more organized for everyone, but also provided a good primer on basic CAR skills. We encourage our reporters to do enterprise stories that cross beats. However, tracking down sources could sometimes be a pain if the reporter who normally covered a particular beat was not around to give you the information. So we came up with a solution to create a database of all sources used by all reporters on their beats. We had the reporters type their information into spreadsheets giving names, numbers and other pertinent information. We took the largest Excel file and converted it to an Access database, then appended the files to that. We then created a front-end using the form function of Access, then Presto! A database reporters can use on a daily basis to search for sources, numbers, and other information. The database can also be updated and edited through the front end.
Elections
One of the great strengths of CAR is the ability to quickly do math, organize information and show trends. One of the most helpful little projects taken on at the Northwestern is our election template, which is nothing more than a simple spreadsheet that does instant election math and analysis for us. I came up with the idea for the template shortly after my first election night as city editor. Oshkosh is divided into some 40 election wards, which are grouped together into 12 voting districts. Now, the problem reporters were dealing with was the way the wards and districts were organized. As the city had grown, wards had been added. While they may have been geographically contiguous, they were not numerically sequential. It all added up to chaos on election night, as reporters tried to add the right wards together to get district totals for maps, graphics, and analysis. Essentially, they were not able to do it on election night for the next morning’s paper, and even the day after, mistakes were often made. To fix the problem, I spent a couple of hours one afternoon setting up a spreadsheet that would automatically add the ward totals and report them out for the corresponding districts. I also created portions of the spreadsheet that would calculate percentage of the vote and percentage turnout. And it all began to happen as the reporter typed in the information. The result: instant election night analysis that allowed our reporters to write better election stories on deadline. We moved past reporting the basics of who won and how many votes to telling you where those votes came from and what that meant. In the April 1999 elections, the spreadsheets proved their worth when we were the only source covering a hotly contested judges race to report that not only was the race decided by fewer than 100 votes, but that the losing candidate had lost the election in his home ward. That same year, our coverage of Common Council elections was the only reporting that showed how local college kids had taken to the polls and ousted an incumbent and helped a newly formed neighborhood group put two of its candidates on the council. That's powerful stuff for readers, and it's all because of a simple spreadsheet.
On to bigger things
OK. So we can do the simple stuff. But what about "major projects?" Well, it's that simple stuff that gave our reporters the ability to do just that. In 1998, the newspaper began working on a story, the effects of which are still being felt today. For several months, the Northwestern had questioned the city's handling of rental housing in this college town. Its regulation seemed ineffective. The potential for a disaster loomed. There was not an existing database of complaints to work with - only the paper inspection and notice logs kept by the city. However, because of the skills our reporters had gathered from creating the source database and the election spreadsheet and other smaller projects, they were confident enough to build their databases of those paper records. They first typed the information into spreadsheets, then converted it into database files. Then, they started looking for trends. What they found shocked a lot of people. Property owners with political connections or financial resources were simply able to skirt the rules. But they didn't stop there. Using census and budget information, they were able to tie the addresses of chronic problem properties to poorer areas of the city and show how the declining property values there were driving up the taxes of property owners everywhere. Now, that's a pretty good story right there. But the data work was only the beginning. Our reporters spent two months interviewing all the parties involved, using that data to confront those who denied there was a problem and to ask probing questions of all. The end result was a three-day series that no one challenged as containing any false information. The city, realizing it was not capable of policing the problem on its own, forged an agreement with the local prosecutor and the state to improve enforcement and criminally prosecute problem cases. Some landlords got out of the business, and those who remained began meeting with city inspectors regularly to review housing code issues. It was a big project accomplished by a small newspaper because reporters believed they could do it and had developed the skills to make it happen.