One-man show
By Joe Kolman The Billings Gazette
The words of the Montana Department of Corrections spokesman made it all worthwhile: the intense week of NICAR Boot Camp, the hours of frustration inflicted on me by Access and Excel and the constant reassuring I had to give my editors that, yes, the story on felons with guns would be coming soon.
I was checking details of a story I was about to publish that said as many as 100 of Montana's most dangerous ex-cons - including murderers, rapists and kidnappers bought hunting licenses last year, meaning they were in possession of rifles, shotguns or at the very least, archery equipment.
State officials acknowledged that no one had ever done such a check before. But the Corrections spokesman said they would start doing so.
"We thought your idea was pretty darn good," the spokesman said.
CAR puts me in a position to do stories that before were the domain of much larger papers with more time, reporters and resources.
Of course, it wasn't my idea. The week I attended Boot Camp, the St. Paul Pioneer Press did a similar story. Full of inspiration upon my return, I knew that such a story would work in Montana, a vast state where there is hunting galore little computerized cooperation between agencies.
There is also very little computer-assisted reporting, which has been both good and bad.
Open field
The obvious benefit is that the field is wide open. The Gazette is the largest paper in the state with a circulation of just 55,000. None of the papers have CAR reporters. There has been little training offered.
But even in my limited experience, I realized that much meaningful work can be done here with CAR. I obtained Y2K reports from local, state and federal agencies that listed scads of databases no one knew existed.
As I had hoped would happen, CAR has opened up a whole new world of reporting for me. I've always loved rooting through documents and reports. But I frequently found myself wishing I had access to more information.
The opportunities presented by CAR make me want to stay at the office long into the evening. For me -- a one-man bureau almost 200 miles from the home puts me in a position to do stories that before were the domain of much larger papers with more time, reporters and resources.
I found that I could work on data cleanup in between phone calls and daily stories. I've also found tons of help on the NICAR listserv. It is truly amazing to be sitting here cussing Bill Gates one moment and the next receiving instant help from CAR experts all over the country.
On the flip side
Downsides include dealing with government officials who have never fielded electronic information requests. The responses ranged from flat refusals to asking me to sign a pledge that I would not use the information for mailing lists.
One state official was very concerned that I would make a mailing list out of his database of municipal sewer systems, as if moonlighted as a parts salesman for treatment facilities.
To be fair, other officials simply e-mailed information, no questions asked.
Facing the editors
On the home front, it was difficult to explain to editors just what I was doing and why it was taking so long. It is hard to explain over the phone the process of my data negotiations and the hours it sometimes takes to clean up information once I receive it. Then there are the hours of reporting and writing not exactly what daily editors like to hear.
And perhaps I erred by enticing editors with flashy stories like felon hunters and then, while I was working on that story, giving them small CAR stories that were not earth shattering. There seemed to be little interest in the less sexy stories such as which town had the most hunting and fishing licenses per capita or my finding of previously missing child support debtors by matching them up with hunting licenses.
But I was more than inspired enough and received enough encouragement to plow ahead. Heeding advice from the Boot Camp, I requested loads of information my first two weeks back. I continued to make at least one request a week so that I always had new records to examine.
Story examples
Other stories I've done in the last five months include:
A study of the financial impacts of nonprofit groups in Montana. An examination of the low fees the Forest Service charges for such uses in the region as cabins on public land. Revealing that the number of concealed weapon permits have doubled over the last five years and are held by scores of state employees, including the chief justice of the Supreme Court and three lawmakers. Finding that Montana leads the country in the number of ice jams on rivers over the last century and also in the number of deaths related to ice jams.
One of the most fun CAR stories I've done came not from a spreadsheet or database but from negotiation. The state refused to even give me a sample of driver's history records. Instead, they insisted I buy them for $4 each from my local bureau. So I bought my record, the record of a well-known traffic violator and the record of Gov. Marc Racicot. Guess which one of us had an expired license and had been driving illegally for six months? Some of the governor's aides were sure that I'd been tipped. I simply told them that if they had turned over the information when I first requested it, it's likely I would have never found out. Unfortunately, they still refuse to provide the entire database.
It's hard for me to believe that it has taken me this long to catch the CAR bug. Being able to do this work has been rewarding both personally and professionally - I found that even with my limited experience my value in the job market increased almost immediately after I started using CAR for my stories.
My enthusiasm for CAR work is not shared by all the reporters I've talked to about it. The very idea of spreadsheets and databases makes their eyes glaze over. But for those who see the benefits, the rewards are great.
Joe Kolman, now a reporter with the Omaha World-Herald, can be reached by e-mail at joekolman@hotmail.com