Computers assist in reporting as visions of CAR are parked

More than a decade after its debut, computer-assisted reporting has made little headway in the daily news lineup, confined for the most part to database editors and special projects teams despite the best efforts of its proponents to move it into the mainstream.

"A lot of us glommed onto this and thought the world will follow," said Neil Reisner, a reporter in the Broward County bureau of the Miami Herald. "That hasn't happened."

Reisner, formerly database editor at The Record in Hackensack, N.J., and training coordinator for the National Institute of Computer-Assisted Reporting (Nicar), has company in his assessment of CAR's current state of affairs.

"One of the original philosophies was that reporters would take after this," said Nora Paul, library and research director at the Poynter Institute in St. Petersburg, Fla. "We were going to arm everybody who could shoot, but everybody became pacifists."

Like many of its proponents, Paul said CAR may have been oversold originally, with overly optimistic projections from its adherents and inflated expectations from newsroom managers. Those expectations -- that everyone would be able to negotiate for data, get it in shape for publication and do it on deadline -- were unreasonable.

Part of the issue lies in simply defining CAR. Is it a three-month project in which a reporter sits in a back room crunching numbers from hundreds of databases to come up with a story? Is it using computer tools in daily reporting to make a story better? Is it using spreadsheets to do math on numbers from government agencies? Is it trolling through newsgroups in search of experts?

It's all of the above, and examples of each kind of CAR can be found across the country. But the Big Bang of CAR has not happened, at least not yet.

"Anecdotal evidence shows that even though the number of people who have convenient access has improved," Paul said, "the number using it hasn't."

A legacy of inaccessibility
The lack of convenient access to the technology needed for computer-assisted reporting is one reason CAR has not made the inroads into the newsroom that its proponents anticipated.

The front-end editing systems popular throughout the newspaper industry in the 1980s and most of the '90s put proprietary terminals on reporters' desks, terminals unable to perform even the most basic CAR functions. Reading and writing was all they were good for.

Later, when open systems publishing became the rage, front-end manufacturers grafted PCs onto their existing systems. These PCs, unfortunately, were often viewed as substitutes for the dumb terminals they replaced and not as tools to aid the reporting process.

CAR again was left at the curb.

To get things moving, newspapers installed dedicated CAR workstations at strategic locations in the newsroom. The stopgap measure designed to improve the use of CAR created its own set of problems. Reporters who have ready access tend to use the tools; those who don't, don't.

Or, as Reisner said, "Those who have it at their desks are more likely to use it than those who have to go to dedicated CAR terminals."

Other papers designated certain reporters as their CAR gurus. That worked fine, to a point, but again created a set of haves and have-nots. The haves would disappear for months at a time to work on projects; the have-nots had little or no way to learn about the tools and what they made possible.

"They thought that there was this big database out there and I had access to it," Reisner said of his early days as database editor at The Record.

Paul recently hosted a seminar at the Poynter Institute that took a look at CAR and its status. Although disappointed by its current low use, she is cautiously optimistic.

"There may have been a poor sales job," Paul said. "And it may be in a slump now, but as people bring in better intranets, better tools, it will get better."

Sarah Cohen, who just stepped down as training director at Nicar to join the CAR team at the Washington Post, said there has been a remarkable change in the last year or so.

"A couple of things happened," Cohen said. "Newspapers got rid of the dumb terminals and got PCs. That was just the tip, but it whetted their appetite."

That appetite will be fed, she predicted. "As the business side demands Internet access, it will spread across the newsroom," she said. "Reporters can get data at their desks off the Internet and sort it a different way," giving them a different perspective.

And, Cohen noted, not having e-mail these days puts a reporter at a competitive disadvantage.

CAR tools -- especially spreadsheets -- can help make the unmanageable less so. When it comes to a chronology or long lists, "it puts order on a disordered list," Cohen said.

Reporters are slowly learning what it takes to use computers as reporting tools, she said, whether it is checking company web sites, e-mailing sources or making those lists.

"Reporters are learning to use this for beat coverage," she said. "They can sign up to alert services. Health people can check the web pages of the businesses and find it's as important as the paper documents.

"They are building beats. They find the 10 sites that help them and check regularly. It's a maturity, and it took a few years to get there."

Another reason for the slow uptake is speed and unfamiliarity with the tools. Reporters think computers can do things faster, Cohen said, but that is not always true.

"A lot of reporters say, 'This takes too long, I can do it by hand faster. They forget that it takes longer the first time,"

An indispensable tool
Duff Wilson, a prize-winning reporter for the Seattle Times, said that for many people in his newsroom, computers are indispensable.

"The computer is as important as a telephone to reporters," Wilson said. "It's the whole world at your fingertips. It's mainstream. I don't know of any newspaper that doesn't take some advantage of it."

But Wilson, too, said that computer-assisted reporting has not spread across the newsroom of his 228,000-circulation evening daily. Two problems are central: the state of equipment and the crunch of time.

"At the Seattle Times, some people have just PCs and some have just Atex," he said, referring to the legacy front-end system made by Atex Media Solutions of Bedford, Mass. Which terminal a reporter uses has made all the difference in the world.

"If you have a computer on your desk and you have a T-1 or a T-3 connection and know how to use (Microsoft) Excel, then it becomes more important than a notebook," Wilson said. Of course, if there is no PC, e-mail or Internet access, then the notebook reigns.

Then there's time, a precious commodity in any newsroom. It takes time to learn the tools and it takes time to use the tools. Consequently, he said, not many of the beat reporters can take advantage of computers.

"With a single reporter covering a beat, it's tough. Computers can't replace talking with people," he said.

Many reporters are taking the time to learn, though, at the many training camps hosted by Nicar and newspaper groups, as well as on their own. And some of those reporters are taking the time to use this newfound knowledge when they go back to work.

Nancy Teichert, an editor with the 284,000-circulation Sacramento Bee, took a three-day computer-assisted reporting course hosted by Nicar at New York University in spring 1997. In that session, Teichert and about 30 other reporters, editors and TV producers got an overview of what CAR was and how it could be used.

Then they spent the better part of three days doing exercises -- finding information on the Internet, importing it into a spreadsheet and manipulating it. They explored such tools of the trade as how to use databases and how to file requests under the Freedom of Information Act.

Repeat that about 50 times a year and you have a phenomenal number of people who have taken these courses. Cohen estimated that between Nicar training courses, the annual Investigative Reporters and Editors meetings and related events, more that 10,000 newspaper people worldwide have been exposed to the tenets of computer-assisted reporting.

"There is a real hunger among reporters for this stuff," Cohen said. "I've had a guy fly in from Argentina to take one of the courses."

But whether those reporters actually use the tools when they get back home is another question.

"One problem is that reporters find they can't necessarily do the same thing quicker," Cohen said. "They do different things, and that sometimes causes problems."

Teichert has been able to use the skills she learned. Hampered originally by a dearth of CAR-capable computers in the Bee newsroom as well as the pressures of the daily job, she was able to help pull together a package in November that analyzed more than a half-million police incident reports dating from 1994 to 1997.

By breaking the area up into sections covering less than one square mile -- smaller than the police reporting districts -- they were able to show that neighborhoods thought of as being high-crime areas were not, as well as the reverse. "It allowed us to get such great detail without relying on anecdotes," Teichert said.

But her success has not spread across the newsroom. "It's pretty much just the librarian and me for now," she said. "We have someone writing about technology, but he doesn't use it."

Like Cohen and the others, Teichert said she hopes that changing technology will boost the use of CAR tools.

"We're using the old brown Coyote terminals," Teichert said of the legacy newsroom system made by Sacramento-based System Integrators Inc., which does not provide access to the Web or any number-crunching tools. "But we're moving toward pagination, and that will put PCs on everyone's desk, which we hope will help."

The Times-Picayune in New Orleans has had several CAR workstations for years, using them to analyze data for its Pulitzer Prize-winning package on global fisheries as well as the recent package on Formosan termites and the damage they cause.

Mark Schleifstein, the paper's environmental reporter, said the 259,000-circulation daily had a lot of anecdotal evidence about how the termites had spread, but no hard numbers. There were no computer databases that might help, but Schleifstein knew of paper documents that might.

"The State Department of Pesticide and Forestry requires pesticide companies to report what they treated, what they used and what they killed," Schleifstein said. "They had six big file cabinets full of forms for the past nine years. I pulled all the New Orleans-area ones, built a database in Excel, transferred the information to MapInfo and built a map. It showed that termites had spread far out of the French Quarter."

For weeks, Schleifstein traveled every Thursday to Louisiana's capital, Baton Rouge, to read files and put the data they offered into electronic format. The stories he produced are just the kind that CAR has become known for, but not every paper can make the commitment that The Times-Picayune did.

New-fashioned newsgathering
If you scale down your expectations of what CAR is and what you can do, you'll find a lot of people practicing it.

"You have to separate out skill sets," said Reisner. "If being able to do e-mail or some level of research is CAR, then yes. If the premise is that CAR is high-level searching or using spreadsheets or databases, I fear that is not true."

Matt Scallan, also a reporter at The Times-Picayune, spends most of his time doing "little CAR," harnessing the power of his laptop to make his daily reporting job easier. Scallan works in the paper's Kenner bureau, covering part of the parish government, the city and the New Orleans Aviation Board, among other things.

"When I'm at parish council meetings and people ask me questions, I plug their names and communities into a database so I can call later when something happens in their community. 'Did you hear the plant explosion? Did you see the fire?' Any of the other things that I have to cover."

That's not to say Scallan is limited to tracking the little things, though that helps. He also is building databases on fire marshals, airport concession contracts, school employees, parish employees and any other thing he can think up.

He also has a spreadsheet that tracks information included in the daily police reports. One thing he uses it for is automatically figuring out the age of a suspect at the time of arrest. "That's just so if something happens later, we have the data," Scallan said of his compact CAR.

More reporters at The Times-Picayune will be using his scaled-down version of computer-assisted reporting, Scallan said, now that the paper has switched from an aging front-end system to a publishing system utilizing powerful PCs.

Reisner, however, said that changing a newsroom's technology is not enough. The real improvement will come, he said, when management expects reporters to have these skills, then rewards those who have and use them.

A way of life at the AP
The Associated Press, spurred on by Executive Editor Bill Ahearn, has made computer-assisted reporting a mantra in its daily report.

Three departments at New York-based AP deal with CAR issues, including one that specializes in helping far-flung bureaus take advantage of the tools. The company also has set up an extensive intranet, including a CD-ROM server with a host of databases that help reduce tortuous treks through paperwork to a few mouse clicks.

"This simple tool has enabled AP reporters to interview witnesses within minutes of the event, including one where the Columbia, S.C., bureau used Pro CD and Select Atlas [electronic street maps and phone lists] to get a witness to a remote plane crash," said Bob Port, AP special assignment editor. "The witness turned out to be the local fire chief."

Having a wide range of databases on hand opens up new opportunities, Port said.

"It now becomes possible to call up all the wage and hour inspectors in, say, Peoria," he said. "Then you can go to Pro CD and see if they have a listed phone number and call them. Or, you can plug in Monica Lewinsky's name and get the position she had in the Pentagon, and when and where it was."

Ahearn said the move to get these tools in the hands of reporters was a simple one, but they were not doing CAR just for the sake of CAR.

"We wanted to give staffers tools right here and now to make a spot story better," he said. "The rules of journalism still apply. We aren't asking, 'Is this a CAR story?' We're asking, 'Is this a story?' If it has a computer-assisted reporting element, that's fine."

That element recently gave the AP a one-hour lead on its competitors when an appeals court reinstated the indictment against Webster Hubbell, a confidant of President Clinton. The reporter, Port said, was on his way to the court where the reinstatement would be announced.

An AP editor dialed up the court's electronic bulletin board system and found the decision already posted on-line, giving the news cooperative a significant edge over the competition.

Port explained that the AP is trying to boost those elements for new and existing staff. As part of that, the newsgathering cooperative is considering whether to create a writing test that includes a computer-assisted reporting component.

"It's really like knowing how to type, it's becoming that essential," Port said. "The competition for speed and accuracy will require it."

-- Steven E. Brier

MapInfo, (518) 285-6000;
PRO CD, (402) 593-4593, e-mail: internet@infousa.com;
System Integrators Inc., (916) 929-9481, e-mail: sii@sii.com

From THE COLE PAPERS, March 1999, Copyright © 1999, All Rights Reserved.