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Computer-assisted Reporting Still Waiting to Fulfill Promise
"We were going to arm everybody who could shoot,
but everybody became pacifists."By Steven E. Brier
More than a decade after it first appeared on the scene, computer-assisted reporting has made little headway in the daily news lineup, remaining for the most part confined to the database editors and special projects despite the efforts of its proponents to move it into the mainstream.
"A lot of us glommed on to this and thought the world will follow," said Neil Reisner, a reporter in the Miami Herald's Broward County bureau. "That hasn't happened."
Reisner, formerly database editor at the Bergen (NJ) Record and training coordinator for the National Institute of Computer Assisted Reporting, has company in his assessment on 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, FL. "We were going to arm everybody who could shoot, but everybody became pacifists."
Paul, like many of its proponents, 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 negotiate for data and get it in shape for use and do it on deadline, were unreasonable. 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, the number using it hasn't," she said.
Convenient access, or the lack of it, is another one of the reasons that CAR has not made the inroads into the newsroom that its proponents expected.
Front-ends holding back
The front-end editing systems popular throughout the newspaper industry in the 1980s and most of the '90s put dumb 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 fourth-wave publishing became the rage, front end manufacturers grafted PCs on 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, again leaving CAR in the lurch.
As newspapers started addressing that issue, they began by installing dedicated CAR workstations at strategic locations in the newsroom. Although a stopgap measure, it 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 computer assisted reporting gurus. That worked fine, to a point, but again created a set of haves and have-nots, with the haves disappearing for months at a time to work on projects and the have-nots not understanding the tools and what was 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.
Things may be looking up
Paul recently hosted a seminar at the Poynter Institute that took a look at CAR and its status. Although disappointed in its current status, 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 past 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."
Then, "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 says, not having e-mail these days puts a reporter at a competitive disadvantage.
Cohen said that the 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 that reporters are slowly learning what it takes to use computers as reporting tools, 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 ten 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," she said.
Duff Wilson, a prize-winning reporter for the Seattle Times, said that for many people, 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 it has not spread across the newsroom. He said the problems arise with the crunch of time and the state of equipment.
"At the Seattle Times, some people have just PCs and some have just Atex," he said. The terminal made all the difference in the world for reporters.
"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, and no email or Internet access, then the notebook reigns.
Time is the reporter's enemy
The other big problem is time. 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, by the newspaper groups and on their own. And some of those reporters are taking the time to use this new-found knowledge when they go back to work.
Nancy Teichert, an editor with the Sacramento Bee, took a three-day computer assisted reporting course hosted by NICAR at New York University in the spring of 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 went through two-and-a-half days of exercises in finding information on the Internet, importing it into a spreadsheet and manipulating it, using databases, filing Freedom of Information Act requests and the other tools of the trade.
Repeat that about 50 times a year and you have a phenomenal number of people who have taken these courses. Cohen said that between the training courses, the annual Investigative Reporters and Editors meetings and related events, more that 10,000 newspaper people worldwide have been exposed to the tenants 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 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 cause problems."
Teichert has been able to use the skills she learned. Hampered originally by a dearth of CAR-capable computers in the 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 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" on his beat, Teichert said.
Like Cohen and the others, Teichert said she hopes that changing technology will boost the use of computer assisted reporting's tools.
"We're using the old brown (SII) Coyote terminals," Teichert said. "But we're moving toward pagination, and that will put PCs on everyone's' desk, which we hope will help."
The New Orleans Times-Picayune has had several CAR workstations for years, using them to analyze data for its Pulitzer-Prize winning global fisheries package as well as the recent package on Formosan termites and the damage they cause.
Mark Schleifstein, the paper's enviroment reporter said the paper had a lot of anecdotal evidence on 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."
That is the type of package that CAR has become known for, with Schleifstein traveling to Baton Rouge every Thursday for weeks to read files and put the data into electronic format. But not everybody can do that level of CAR. Scale down expectations of what CAR is and what you can do, there are a lot more people practicing it.
"You have to separate out skill sets," said Reisner. "if being able to do email 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 the 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 who has concession contracts at the airport, school employees, parish employees, fire marshals and any other thing he can think up. He also has a spreadsheet that tracks information included in the daily police reports, automatically figuring out the age of a suspect at the time of arrest, among other things.
"That's just so if something happens later, we have the data," Scallan said.
Scallan expects that more reporters at The Picayune will be using his scaled-down version of computer assisted reporting now that the paper has switched from an aging front-end system to a publishing system utilizing powerful PCs. Reisner, however, said that changing technology is not enough. The real improvement, he said will come when newspaper management expects reporters to have these skills and then rewards those who do, and use them.
"Editors are totally reasonable to expect reporters to use computers as a reporting tool. To be able to use something off the Internet and sort it and perform a calculation," Cohen said.
CAR is a mantra at AP
The Associated Press, spurred on by Executive Editor Bill Ahearn, has made computer-assisted reporting a mantra in its daily report.
Three different departments at the AP deal with CAR issues, including one that specializes in helping the 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 mouseclicks.
"This simple tool has enabled AP reporters to interview witnesses within minutes of the event, including one where the Columbia, SC, 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."
Port said that having a wide range of databases on hand opens up new opportunities.
"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 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 when an appeal court reinstated the indictment against Webster Hubbell, a confidante 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 online, giving them a significant edge over their competition.
Port says the AP is trying to boost those elements for new and existing staff. As part of that, the company is considering creating a writing test that includes a computer-assisted reporting component.
"It's really like knowing how to type," Port said. "It's becoming that essential. The competition for speed and accuracy will require it."
© 1999, The Cole Papers, February 1999
