Computer-Assisted Reporting Levels the Information Playing Field

Computer-assisted reporting (CAR) is a perfect fit for business journalism.

Business stories are awash in data, indexes and other numbers. Computer-assisted reporting helps business journalists find the right datasets, navigate and understand the numbers and data, and analyze them to provide context and depth for their stories.

Databases on businesses -- in the form of tables of columns and rows -- are abundant on the Internet and useful for reference when viewed online. But with CAR, a journalist has the skills to search and find the most relevant data and to download that data to his or her own computer.

Understanding how to search effectively saves countless hours. Most efficient searches start with knowing where other journalists have indexed the best sites on business. Two good starter sites are the Net Tour of Investigative Reporters and Editors at www.ire.org/training/nettour and the Reporter's Desktop at www.reporter.org/desktop, Journalists also can read numerous tip sheets on finding useful business data at the IRE Resource Center at www.ire.org/resourcecenter.

The best Web sites for business data include both government and commercial sites. Much of the basic data is free.

When scouting for data on a business, think about all the government agencies a business must file with and what it needs to do to begin operations and to stay alive. Each time a business deals with a government agency, it leaves a mark, and that mark is a document that usually becomes a record in a database.

Businesses must obtain local business licenses, and those are often in a database on the Internet or at a local government agency. Many businesses are incorporated, and that means they must file with the Secretary of State. That incorporation document and subsequent annual report go into a database.

Most businesses come under some kind of regulation and inspection, and those inspections go into a database whether it's a bar, restaurant, hair salon, hospital or nursing home.

Businesses own property, and that can be found in the real and personal property databases in counties and cities. Businesses have to pay taxes, and the assessed taxes go into a database kept by an assessor's office. Payment or lack of payment is recorded at the tax collector's office, and liens filed against businesses for not paying local, state or federal taxes are in a database at a county recorder's office.

If a business gets money from the government, a journalist is really in luck. Databases on government contracts and payments are easy to get and they contain lots of details about a business.

It's also nearly impossible to operate a business for any length of time without some kind of litigation, and there are numerous court databases online throughout the country.

Once a journalist has one of these databases, he or she can analyze and manipulate the database by opening a table -- if it's not too large -- in a spreadsheet such as Microsoft Excel instead of a calculator. With a spreadsheet, a journalist quickly can sort and filter data or do calculations -- such as percentage changes, rates or ratios -- to provide background for a story.

In many cases, the sorting of the data, or the calculations performed on the data, "reveals" a story, as a human tipster might, by showing substantial changes in budgets, salaries, expenditures or other numbers.

A spreadsheet is far superior to a calculator because it saves time. A journalist can copy calculations and repeat them hundreds or thousands of times for other data. For example, a journalist might compare the growth in imports from one country to the United States over five years. With a spreadsheet, the calculation can be repeated for all the other countries in the world with a quick click and drag by a mouse.

Unlike a calculator, a spreadsheet can save calculations so they won't have to be recreated or modified later. This is especially important for databases that are updated often. By quickly adding the new data to the saved old data, the reporter can find significant changes and trends on deadline.

A business journalist also can use a spreadsheet to build a table of collected information. Many journalists with CAR skills have created their own datasets for ranking the top 100 companies in their area, for comparing salaries, for analyzing the performance of investment firms or for simply keeping logs of requests for information.

Lastly, a spreadsheet can help journalists visualize data because it can convert numbers into charts. Reporters can then work closely with graphic artists. The artist can import the spreadsheet chart into his or her own program, such as Adobe Illustrator, which allows the artist to put the chart into the news organization's style and present the numbers in the easiest way for readers to grasp. That keeps the text from getting bogged down with scores of numbers.

Some databases, however, are too big for a spreadsheet and in those cases a journalist should use a database manager such as Microsoft Access. A database manager is built for handling and storing large amounts of data. With a database manager, a journalist can search, summarize and compare records quickly.

Journalists have used a database manager to look at tens of thousands of records on small business loans, federal contracts, business safety violations, dangerous consumer products, factory pollution and many other topics.

Also, database managers allow journalists to compare and match two or more databases not intended to go together. For example, the business practices of HMOs have come under more scrutiny. One such practice is to offer reduced rates to customers who use an HMO-approved doctor. This allowed Newsday to match a database of approved doctors to a database of disciplined doctors, finding dozens of approved doctors who had violations such as botched surgery, sexual misconduct, drug abuse and fraud against government-backed insurance plans. Journalists would find such stories nearly impossible to do without the power of a database manager.

And that's what computer-assisted reporting is really about -- harnessing the power that sources already use. With CAR, business journalists can use the same tools that companies use to examine those companies and level the information playing field.