About a year ago, my idea of mapping was pulling out an atlas and a ruler. I was still grinding my teeth over simple Access func- tions and wondered with every mouse click, "Am I missing something?" It was about this time that I got a new beat at The News Tribune (Tacoma, Wash.) covering county government and all related county agencies, from law enforcement to solid waste. The 2000 Census was also mine to shepherd.
CAR started Although I was interested in taking off with my new beat, I knew that my primary goal was to get computer-assisted reporting off the ground at the Trib. I was a beginner, learning by failing and failing again, but I knew what CAR could do and believed our newsroom could ben- efit if more reporters realized its potential for their beats. So here was my challenge: I had to get better myself.
I had to show the editors why they should invest in CAR. And I had to get the attention of other reporters. was a beginner, learning by failing and failing again, but I knew what CAR could do and believed our newsroom could benefit if more reporters realized its potential for their beats. Through determination, the support of a few key people and a beat that has been quite conducive to CAR, I was able to do all three.
Today we might not have a newsroom of re- porters who are proficient in CAR, but at least they're interested and trying. For starters, I think the key for me was getting a good beat that worked well for ex- perimenting with CAR projects. The county was a good geography to tackle. It was small enough to digest, but large enough to show patterns and diversity among its cities. And county government - at least in most Washington counties - covers a wide range of services including law enforce- ment, planning, elections, utilities and so on.
Voting records, building permits, criminal histories and property assess- ments were all part of the deal. Nine-track I started with property records. I got my first lesson in negotiating for the data with an agency that hadn't received such a request from a newspaper before. It took a few weeks and we got the data on nine-track tapes. After dusting off the newspaper's nine-track tape player and toy- ing around with it for a while, I soon wised up and sent the tapes to MaryJo Sylwester at NICAR to put them on CD.
But the data from the CDs didn't correspond with the record layout. We assumed there was a prob- lem with the tapes, so we went back to the assessor's office and got the data on cartridges instead. We found the source of the problem when Sylwester looked closer at the hand- written record layout and found packed fields we hadn't noticed before. When I got them back on CD the second time, everything worked well.
But that didn't mean my problems were over. Most of the fields were in acronyms that I didn't understand. So before I started making assumptions, I took the layout to the assessor's office, sat down with members of the records staff and went over each field one by one. Technicians helpful By that time, I also had developed a rela- tionship with the technicians in the assessor's office, especially with records manager Tami Kohl, who was patient enough to answer my numerous questions.
For someone still learn- ing the ropes, that type of relationship helped me get support for using the data and an understanding of which findings were im- portant. We now have a system to get full updates on an annual basis and smaller updates throughout the year. Property records were good for showing the value of CAR to the newsroom. Not only could we use them for projects, but we could also use them for daily reporting, even break- ing news.
The records had addresses, owner names, values, taxes, exemptions and sales history. Taxes and values were hot topics for readers as well, and editors appreciated that. I did one simple story that showed the disparity between the market value and the taxable value of homes in some parts of the county. I also used the database to find the owners of homes that had been contaminated by methamphetamine labs.
In doing the meth story, the Tacoma- Pierce County Health Department gave me a short list of properties that had been con- taminated by meth pollution. I typed that list into a table in Access. I matched it up, by parcel number, to the data from the assessor's office and got the owners' names. Then I ran the owner's names through our online Courtlink criminal conviction service to see which owners were not also party to the meth incident that led to the contamination.
(Be- cause, hey, if you're the one who contami- nated the house it's your house- then there's little pity for you when you've got to pay to get it detoxified.) Matching values with geography My next step was trying to match prop- erty values with geography, which is when I started with the ArcView mapping software. This was another time when the county beat helped, because county government is re- sponsible for planning and zoning and had developed a stellar GIS staff.
They had a trea- sure trove of maps and a staff with a good deal of expertise - again a value for someone still learning. Although it helped to work with local of- ficials, the negotiations weren't always easy. For most agencies, this was the first time they were getting such requests from a newspa- per. I ran into a few typical roadblocks, in- cluding officials saying they couldn't do it, they didn't have time to do it, if they did it our computers couldn't handle it, and, oh, by the way, it'll cost at least $1,000.
I knew we had to have a better way. Even if I convinced reporters that the county had all this data they could use on their beats, I risked having them go to the agency and get frustrated, or give up, at the first denial. I set up an informal meeting with our executive editor David Zeeck, my team leader, myself, the county's communications director and attorneys from both sides. Even if I convinced reporters that the county had all this data they could use on their beats, I risked having them go to the agency and get frustrated, or give up, at the first denial.
We talked about how our reporters would be making more requests for elec- tronic data in the future and how it might be better for both sides if all county de- partments had a similar policy for han- dling such media requests. We haven't had a chance yet to test these county officials on their willingness to cooperate, but we did get our ArcView shapefiles at no cost after facing an initial charge of about $100 each.
I used Microsoft Access for both matches. For the assessed value vs. market value story, I used one database from the assessor's office of recent sales. I merely listed properties by parcel number and calculated the difference between the two values. (I also had an ArcView shapefile of all the parcels in the county. I matched the parcel numbers from the assessor data to the parcel numbers on the ArcView data and plotted them on a map of the county to see if this was a phenomenon centered in a specific area.
Turns out it wasn't, but it was worth checking.) Since then, reporters have started talk- ing to their editors about CAR projects and a few have come to me for help. I be- lieve we'll see more of them tackling CAR projects in the near future. Software: Microsoft Access, MapInfo Data: ASCII text files of sex offender information; names and addresses public schools; the locations and operators of licensed daycare centers and family-care homes.
The Center for Sex Offender Management has more information on sex offender issues (www.csom.org). The center, cosponsored by the U.S. Department of Justice's Office of Justice Programs, was established in 1997. The site includes a reference library and related links. in their newsrooms, I'd recommend getting the support of at least one senior editor. We were fortunate to have editors who gave us the hardware, software and blind faith that we were doing something productive.
I'd also recommend that you trick at least one other reporter into helping you. I realized, through the help of my col- league Dave Wickert, that no matter how much singular determination you have, it's always important to have someone to counter your assumptions and share your frustration when a simple Access function turns into a fiasco. Paula Lavigne Sullivan can be reached by e-mail at Paula.Sullivan@mail.tribnet.com