A disaster strikes a community. A jury announces a big verdict. A team of reporters scrambles to gather information and reactions. Credit is spread generously among all contributors to the story.
A computer-assisted reporting expert uses a database manager to match a list of deadbeat parents with a list of prisoners and finds the most-wanted deadbeat sitting in a cell just down the hall from the sheriff's office that is trying to locate him. A reporter airs the revelation in a big story with no credit to the CAR expert.
For many journalists doing CAR, unfortunately, the second scenario has become common.
Uplink first raised the question of proper crediting in 1992, with an article by Dan Woods, former database editor with The (Raleigh, N.C.) News & Observer. Woods found that CAR contributors were often left out of the credit loop. And that sentiment is certainly credit-worthy.