Santa Fe Reporter honored for using public data to list the wealthy
Corey Pein
Corey Pein of the Santa Fe Reporter set out to find the wealthiest among Santa Fe residents using “property records, nonprofit tax returns filed with the Internal Revenue Service, philanthropic donor lists, Securities and Exchange Commission filings, private aircraft registrations with the Federal Aviation Administration, political campaign donors through the Federal Election Commission, court records including divorces and lawsuits, press accounts of luxury homes and art collectors, and straight-up town gossip.” His story won first place in the AltWeekly Awards for Innovation/Format Buster.
The list within the story uses symbols to show how much each person has without listing exact figures. The online story also has searchable online databases of the data compiled using the public database site Socrata. Another software that converts spreadsheets to searchable online databases is Caspio.
Corey’s story says:
“Wealth also gets harder to measure as it grows. Counting layoffs is one thing. Tracking the performance of complex, constantly changing private investment portfolios, combined with the fluctuating value of land and property, is another.
Truth is, any time you see a ‘richest’ list, whether it’s in Forbes or Fortune or the defunct Crosswinds weekly—which published a New Mexico’s-richest list in 1996—the methodology behind it is at best educated guesswork. Even the government doesn’t know who’s wealthiest. If there’s anything people lie about as often as sex, it’s money.”
Today’s Tip: Browse public records for no specific reason.
Corey, who covers money, politics and violence, says he looks through public records for “footprints.” He says it took about two weeks to collect and compile the data.
“It would’ve taken much longer if I hadn’t already downloaded some of the information, such as FAA aircraft registrations for our area and IRS databases of tax-exempt organizations, absent a specific reason to use it,” he says. “I started tracking down the richest people in town the day I started at the Santa Fe Reporter—about 10 months before that story was published. ”
Corey’s advice: compile all the information from various sources into a central Excel sheet as you collect it. “If you could see my desk, you’d weep over the messes of paper I create for those feature-length stories,” he says.
Where should you start your database browsing? David Donald, data editor for the Center for Public Integrity, offers this list of at least 25 databases all local newsrooms should have.
For more on backgrounding people and businesses, check out this advice from Jaimi Dowdell, a training director for Investigative Reporters and Editors.
Looking for training in how to be a better business watchdog? Check out the daylong workshops on computer-assisted reporting for business journalists that the Reynolds Center is co-presenting with Investigative Reporters and Editors in Atlanta on Oct. 11 and Milwaukee on Nov. 9.
