Although the use of computer-assisted reporting is growing in countries outside of the United States, the issue of access to information - particularly electronic information - remains a concern.
From South America to Scandinavia, journalists say more and more information is becoming available electronically, but it is either aggregated at a municipal or county level or is high-priced from a private company.
To remedy the situation, journalists in European Union member countries are pushing for the EU to develop a Freedom of Information law similar to that in the United States.
In the meantime, aggressive and dedicated journalists continue to publish and broadcast compelling and powerful stories using computer-assisted reporting.
In this issue, we've included snapshots of some of the work being done around the world. Here's a glimpse:
Netherlands
The origin of CAR in the Netherlands came in 1994 when the NRC Handelsblad became the first in its country to publish the results of an election mapping project.
The Handelsblad displayed in full color graphics how each party finished according to individual provinces. The idea drew the attention from other media outlets in radio, TV and magazine and is now considered a standard for publishing election results. Yet despite the recent success, the public is still slow to catch on to the importance of CAR projects. Sometimes projects fail to draw any remarks at all from readers, said Dick van Eijk of NRC Handelsblad.
A big problem for Dutch journalists is the lack of independent oversight in making sure public data is accessible to everyone. Although most government information is offered in electronic format, it is still too expensive for most newspapers to obtain. The most expensive data is anything on companies or homeowners, van Eijk said.
A recent coup for Dutch journalists, however, was winning a court case that deemed public schools data as public information.
Van Eijk has used CAR to look at topics ranging from royal decorations to attendance and voting of European Parliament members. He analyzed where the 2,000 recipients of Queen's Day Royal Decorations lived and used maps that show that the higher decorations were granted in different areas than lower ones.
Prior to the European Parliament elections, Van Eijk analyzed how often members of the parliament had been present at meetings and how they voted during the past five years. National background turned out to be a key factor. The Dutch were present and voted most often while Italians were least often present.
Denmark
Three Danish journalists first learned how to incorporate databases and spreadsheets into their everyday work when they attended a 1996 CAR bootcamp in Columbia, Mo. Last April, the trio started the Danish Institute for Computer-Assisted Reporting. Since then, DICAR has attracted more than 200 members.
Nils Mulvad, who helped start DICAR, said that although most Danish editors are reluctant to change, CAR is starting to catch on. Mulvad said his current goal is to forge a joint initiative among other journalists to fight for electronic access to documents. (Read more about DICAR on page three.)
Brazil
Reporter Jose Roberto de Toledo of the Brazilian newspaper Folha de Sao Paulo said most journalists are still slow to catch on to CAR in his country. In fact, many government agencies are more advanced with electronic files than journalists, he said. Despite that, de Toledo has published several crime stories with the help of CAR. He constructed a database of more than 100 cases of multiple homicides for 1998 as a way to profile the victims. By using other crime data, de Toledo was able to offer for the first time a list of the Brazilian cities with the most homicides. Like in other foreign countries, Brazilian readers' interest in CAR stories has been limited to such hot topics as violence and unemployment. "If the article has too many numbers, rates, percentages and little ideas, it tends to be boring," de Toledo said.
David Wethe can be reached by e-mail at davidw@nicar.org