by Jennifer LaFleur
When San Jose Mercury News science reporter Glennda Chui wanted to look at science research funding in the San Francisco Bay Area, sorting through piles of paper documents would have been virtually impossible. By using a database of research grants, she was able to look at trends in a more reasonable time frame.
When Keith Epstein was trying to find unnamed victims of drug testing, he used death databases from various states to pinpoint deaths in particular locations with particular demographics.
“Participation by these men, women and children in medical experimentation is crucial to determining whether drugs, devices or surgical procedures are safe and effective. But even today, decades after Tuskeegee and Cold War-era radiation experiments, for many patients there is no evidence they were aware of being part of an experiment, that they consented, or that the responsible groups of overseers kept proper tabs on their safety and progress or injuries,” Epstein said.
As part of its El Niño coverage, the Mercury News obtained
electronic maps of landslides in the Santa Cruz Mountains and overlaid building
permits to show that significant numbers of new building permits were being
issued in landslide areas.
Chui, Epstein and Mercury News database editor Jennifer LaFleur told
reporters at the 1998 National Association of Science Writers meeting in
Philadelphia why computer-assisted reporting skills are so crucial today.
“While many science writers do an excellent job of explaining the mechanisms of the cell, animal behaviors or particle physics, and every day publications and networks follow incremental developments, trumpeting breakthroughs, describing opportunities and lamenting setbacks, we are woefully neglectful of the mechanics, business, politics and flaws within the medical enterprise itself,” Epstein said. “By using the same central analytical tool as the modern scientist, clinical investigator and government regulator—the computer—even beginning journalists now can dig well beneath the surface of events and announcements to examine a whole set of previously elusive avenues for significant reporting, investigation, revelation and explanation.”
As more information is available via computer, more journalists are using computers as reporting tools. This is what’s now called computer-assisted reporting. The basic tools of CAR are online information, spreadsheets and databases (although there are other tools such as mapping or statistical programs). CAR is not just surfing the Net, it’s knowing what to do with the stuff you catch either online or by going to a government agency and getting the information (ideally in electronic format).
Although these techniques were first adopted by projects reporters, they are more widespread in all areas of journalism today. And as one of the pioneers in computer-assisted reporting, Elliot Jaspin, once said: “A reporter who can’t read a magnetic tape is as illiterate as the fifteenth-century peasant confronted by Gutenberg.” It is important, however, to remember that CAR is just another tool—not unlike your telephone. CAR still requires just as much work, good ideas and talking to real people.
“At The Cleveland Plain Dealer, computers—together with traditional essentials such as the development of dependable sources, old-fashioned gumshoeing, persistence, use of the Freedom of Information Act and other ways to obtain sensitive documentation and data, sifting through those documents to unraveling and understand complicated subjects, a few lucky breaks, and support from editors with authority—enabled us to open a window on the unseen world of the human test subject,” Epstein said.
While CAR has its roots in long-term investigative reporting, it’s not just for projects anymore. Many reporters across the country are finding ways to use computers in beat reporting.
The first of the three basic tools for CAR are:
Many journalists refuse to even use the term computer-assisted reporting, pointing out we never had a term called telephone-assisted reporting. CAR is just another tool available to you—it should not replace the reporting process. What it does allow you to do is to go beyond news releases and government summary reports and look at the data behind those reports.
For more information:
Jennifer LaFleur is Database Editor of The San Jose Mercury News.
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