{
  "id": "2001-julyaugust-teaching-car",
  "slug": "2001-julyaugust-teaching-car",
  "url": "https://dwillis.github.io/uplink/article/2001-julyaugust-teaching-car.html",
  "year": 2001,
  "month": "July/August",
  "monthNum": 7,
  "headline": "Teaching CAR",
  "kicker": "CLASSROOM",
  "author_name": "Jeff South",
  "author_title": "Associate Professor",
  "affiliation": "Virginia Commonwealth University",
  "summary": "The article describes 'stealth CAR' (computer-assisted reporting), a practical approach to teaching data journalism skills by integrating them into existing courses rather than offering standalone classes, using real-world examples and simple tools to help students understand data analysis as a fundamental reporting skill.",
  "keywords": [
    "CAR",
    "journalism",
    "data"
  ],
  "topics": [
    "Journalism & Newsroom",
    "Investigative Methods",
    "Education"
  ],
  "technologies": [
    "Excel"
  ],
  "full_text": "At a computer-assisted reporting conference several years ago, Stephen Miller, a technology expert at The New York Times, said he took an under-the-radar approach to CAR training in his newsroom. Talking to reporters, he found out what tasks they were doing by hand - like calculating how a government budget had changed from one year to the next. Then Miller let slip that it would be easier and faster to do such computations with a spreadsheet, and would the reporter like to know how?\n\nMiller called this approach \"stealth CAR,\" and I have found it's a good model for classrooms as well as newsrooms.\n\nAt VCU\n\nVirginia Commonwealth University doesn't offer stand-alone CAR courses. Instead, faculty members integrate CAR into existing newswriting and reporting courses. That approach has certain advantages: It signals to students that CAR should be part of everyday journalism - not an esoteric specialty. Here are some tips on doing \"stealth CAR\" in J-schools:\n\nBegin with paper. Before crunching census data with Excel, for example, give students a sheet of paper with a few columns of population numbers, and have them compute the percentage change by hand or with a calculator. This will help students understand and visualize what they want the computer to do.\n\nKeep it simple. Don't start with an outer join involving three tables and a nested query. Start with sorting data in a spreadsheet and doing simple calculations. It may be better to teach a kludge in a familiar program than to teach an elegant solution with more complicated software.\n\nKeep it real. Use real data - crime, traffic deaths and other stats - available online from government agencies. Taking advantage of student-power, obtain paper records (like health inspection reports for restaurants around campus), and have your class input them into a computer.\n\nRelate CAR to other reporting skills. Describe CAR as another way of interviewing - but interviewing data instead of people. Your goal is to find bottom-line trends and then examples that illustrate the trends.\n\nPreview, present, review, practice. Tell students what you are going to teach them; tell them what they are learning as you teach them; then tell them what you just taught them. Have students practice a particular skill, like the AutoSum button and other bottom-line functions, on a variety of datasets.\n\nEmphasize people, not numbers. Reporters are in the business of telling stories, and data alone do not make a story. Discuss how to humanize the trends you discover with CAR. Then have students shut down their computers and go interview people.\n\nJeff South can be reached by e-mail at jcsouth@vcu.edu",
  "provenance": {
    "extracted_by": "anthropic/claude-sonnet-4-6",
    "extracted_at": "2026-07-05",
    "verified": true
  },
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  "html_url": "https://dwillis.github.io/uplink/article/2001-julyaugust-teaching-car.html",
  "json_url": "https://dwillis.github.io/uplink/article/2001-julyaugust-teaching-car.json"
}