Finding stories in the Census numbers
By Flickr user Eira Tansey
Census workers must knock on 40 million doors this year. To tackle the task of targeting one-third of the nation’s households, one million jobs must be filled.
Just this fact alone means there are plenty of stories to jump on before the numbers are calculated and released.
Paul Overberg, a database editor at USA Today, led a session at today’s Computer-Assisted Reporting Conference to help reporters identify stories in the 2010 Census.
The job angle was high on his list.
Overberg said to keep an eye on how the payroll and scheduling process is handled, how the new Census workers will fit into the 494 local offices, and also the normal everyday mishaps that could occur like dog bites or lost laptops. (For more on this topic, you can also check out this post from Melissa Preddy on the Census job boost.)
“When you put this many people on the doorstops all over the country things happen,” Overberg said.
Once the numbers are out, Overberg also suggested focusing on topics like segregation, diversity, migration and sprawl for Census coverage.
Sprawl data in particular could offer some interesting insights into the impact of light rail construction since 2000. You could measure if the stops have had an influence on the populations in the neighborhoods that surround them.
“It would be interesting to look at what is the population density around the magic quarter mile within the light rail stop,” Overberg said.
Another table to keep an eye on is vacancy. This data could offer interesting insight into the impact of the struggling economy.
“In a neighborhood, you’ll know there is 2,000 people there, but maybe half the homes are vacant,” Overberg said. “You could tell that there might be a lot more people in a spot once we get through this foreclosure crisis.”
