In this week’s episode, Megan Calcote compiles some of the databases and tips for using them that were shared during Reynolds Week 2016. The speakers highlighted are Steve Doig, data journalist and Knight Chair in Journalism at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication, and Evan Wyloge, senior reporter at the Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting. They each share some of the databases you can use for your business reporting and their methods for getting the most out of that data.
Transcript
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Megan Calcote: Databases you can use.
Evan Wyloch: My approach is kill them with kindness. You know, I put smiley faces in pretty much all my professional emails, and that’s not a joke.
Calcote: Hello and welcome to the Reynolds Center podcast. We are coming to you from the Donald W. Reynolds National Center for Business Journalism, based at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Communication at Arizona State University. I’m Megan Calcote, program coordinator for the Reynolds Center. Today we have tips from Steve Doig, data journalist and Knight Chair in Journalism here at the Walter Cronkite School and Evan Wyloch, senior reporter at the Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting. Steve and Evan joined us as presenters at Reynolds Week 2016 where they shared some useful database resources for journalists. Steve got things started by talking about foreign trade. If you need detailed information on commodities, he recommends using USA Trade Online.
Steve Doig: If you want to get really deep into the weeds and looking at particular kinds of commodities that are traded and and their effect in different different areas. In other words, you’re in Boston, you want to know where the stuff being traded through Boston, or you’re here in Arizona, and you want to know what’s coming in say for Mexico, this USA Trade Online is is basically a professional tool that, until about three months ago, was actually quite expensive. And for no apparent reason that I know it is now free.
Calcote: USA Trade Online is updated monthly, so it’s a great place to look for recent information. You can find USA trade online by visiting usa trade.census.gov if you want to find data on your local businesses, Evan suggested using state government websites. Here in Arizona, you can find a listing of active state agencies, boards and commissions by visiting azdirect.azdoa.gov.
Wyloch: So basically, if there’s a board or a commission or an Agency of any sort, they should be doing something, and something means tracking, and tracking means database. And so if you can find one of these for your state, you know you might just scroll through and find something really cool. And again, boards, commission, agencies, typically their job is to at least be tracking something, and they should have databases that you can go get from them.
Calcote: Steve and Evan shared that they use this database in their journalism classes. One student mapped the locations of beauty shops and found they were more concentrated in wealthy parts of town. Another uncovered similar findings among physical therapy offices. It could be a good idea to see if your state has a similar listing and to become familiar with it. You never know what kind of stories you might come up with from playing around with the data. Steve is a fan of looking at healthcare data, because there’s so much publicly available. The database you’ll hear Steve discuss is from the Arizona Department of Health Services website, azdhs.gov. Individual states may handle this information differently, so you might need to do some research to find it in your area. As you’re about to hear, such databases hold the potential to uncover fascinating information.
Doig: Every state’s health department, and I think this is part of the data that flows up to the federal government, but at least every state that I’ve paid attention to on this, requires all the hospitals that aren’t, in other words the VA hospitals are not in this, but all the other hospitals are required to send in data within, I think it has to be within something like six months, so the data is actually pretty up to date, of every patient that exits a hospital. In fact, two different databases, one are the people that actually go into the hospital to be, you know, seriously treated that spend the night or longer. The other is the emergency room data. It’s not identifiable. Obviously there’s no names on there, but there is information about age, race, gender, a certain amount of geographic information, at least three digit ZIP codes, sometimes five digit ZIP code, if there are enough of them in a in a particular ZIP code. 20 or 24 different diagnosis codes of sort of what they what they went in for, 20 or so codes that they were given for that particular thing. The dates they went in. There’s a, basically an outcome code, you know, what was the outcome? They they were, they went home, they died, that’s one of the outcomes that sometimes happens. All those kinds of things are in there. Also a bunch of what I guess I would call fantasy financial information as well. It’s basically the amount that supposedly is being billed for whatever medical procedures that were done. I say fantasy, of course, because most people have no idea what is being billed for their particular thing, unless you don’t have insurance. And then you get the shocking results sent directly to you. The larger number of Americans who have insurance never really know it and the actual billing is fantasy, because the insurance companies have negotiated entirely different things along with Medicare and so on.
Calcote: Steve and his students put this database to use for a documentary examining the rise of heroin use in Arizona. They used the hospital discharge database to see how many people were admitted to local hospitals for heroin overdoses. As Steve explains, the admit codes inside the data can help you drill down on particular illnesses or injuries you might want to cover.
Doig: Before there was a code for everything. Now there’s a code for everything, except each thing has been sliced into tiny pieces. So it’s now 10 fold more. Instead of a code for broken leg, the code is now for how the leg got broken in a car accident in a fall. It’s, you know, slip and fall in a house, no outside of a house, all that kind of stuff.
Calcote: Finally, Steve recommends looking at the equity and athletics data analysis cutting tool. It’s a great place to find surprising amounts of information about college athletics.
Doig: One of my favorite ways of looking at really detailed information about, for instance, different athletic programs, is from the Title IX data. This is the gender equity data that Congress has required for a number of years for all the universities at every level to to fill out a very detailed information about basically, the participation in sports in universities. Particularly designed to make sure that women are having the same opportunities for sports scholarships and things like that, that men are. As a way to measure all that they require, and I think there’s something like 100 almost 150 variables in these databases that are that are gathered each year by each place. So it includes information on the number of male and female students that are in each of the different scholastic sports that are being done by university, plus budget information. How much is being spent on each one, on scholarships, on generally, running the athletics program? What are the coaches salaries for each of them? It’s not only a great way to do that kind of gender equity comparisons, but also just like at the essentially the business of, for instance, college sports, if you start digging into this data, you realize that very few programs are actually making money, that they’re actually they’re a drain. They’re supported by student fees and so on. Here you have essentially the books are open because they have to report this stuff.
Calcote: As you’re searching for data for your stories, you might come across documents that contain the information you’re looking for, but not the raw numbers. One of the smartest things you can do as a reporter is to simply ask for the raw data you need.
Wyloch: You know, I went to the corporation commission and talked with their people and asked them, “Hey, you know, what if I wanted to get the record the raw data for, you know, every kind of corporation listing like this, right?” So you see this here. It’s got file number, this corporation name here, right? And then it’s got a domestic address. So there is a structured database behind all this, and this is being presented out of a structured database. So they were willing to work with me and gave me like 15 years of corporate filings and it was gigbytes and I haven’t done what I plan to do with it, but it’s nice to know that they are at least willing to give that stuff over and then you can do stuff like plot addresses and look at trends over time.
Calcote: It’s not enough to just ask for the data. It’s important to develop a positive relationship with the people who are in charge of it.
Wyloch: My approach is kill them with kindness. You know, I put smiley faces in pretty much all my professional emails, and that’s not a joke. I really think that’s helpful. I spent a good deal of time working with the Secretary of State’s office because they hadn’t really had people come and ask for the entire database before. Which turned out to be really usefu because then I get to meet everybody on their staff that deals with the database. We get to have a conversation about it, they tell me what they’re dealing with. We can look at it together. You know, if you’ve got a really big, complex database, but you’re determined to get into it, I’ve found it’s really all about developing a relationship with the custodians of the data. You shouldn’t just be not afraid to call up whoever’s in charge of these databases that are handled by your state, but actively try to develop a relationship with them. It’s going to be super helpful. I actually sometimes text with the Secretary of State or her PIO and we just go back and forth and keep up a good relationship. And they’re always super helpful.
Calcote: That brings us to the end of another episode of the How to Cover Money podcast. Thank you, Steve Doig and Evan Wyloch for sharing your insights with our Reynolds Week fellows earlier this year. If you enjoyed these database tips, Steve Doig will be doing a similar session at the NYCAR conference. You can register to hear more of these tips during his pre-conference workshop: 10 great business databases to mine for stories. Visit the Investigative Editors and Reporters website, IRE.org or visit businessjournalism.org to sign up.
The Reynolds Center is also presenting a new webinar in partnership with Media Shift. If you want to learn more about social media analytics, I recommend signing up. Visit businessjournalism.org to sign up for advanced social media analytics, which will be presented by me Megan Calcote. The webinar will be available online, on demand after it’s over. So if you happen to miss it, visit businessjournalism.org to find the replay. If advanced analytics is too much, I presented a webinar a couple months ago that included an introduction to analytics. You can find that replay online now at businessjournalism.org. The Reynolds Center offers a variety of training resources for business journalists. Visit businessjournalism.org to find articles and self-guided training, to download our free ebook, Guide to Business Beat Basics, or to sign up for our monthly newsletter. The newsletter will keep you up to date on other training opportunities from the Reynolds Center year round. If you liked what you heard today, don’t forget to subscribe so you never miss a new episode, and make sure to leave us a rating or review on ITunes or Stitcher. Ratings help make this podcast more visible to other business journalists who might enjoy the tips we’ve shared today. Support for How to Cover Money comes from the Donald W. Reynolds National Center for Business Journalism. You We’ll be back in two weeks with tips for covering campaign finance from Leslie Wayne.
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