Assignment: Comment on a CAR story

By On September 1, 2011 · 36 Comments

You can learn a bunch about computer-assisted reporting by regularly reading news stories that used data analysis. Plus, it’s a good way to find inspiration.

In some cases, CAR makes the story. In others, CAR might provide crucial context.

By noon Tues., Sept. 6, find a story where a journalist used CAR. Using the comments for this post, tell why the story interests you and list some questions you have about it. Also, include a link to the story. It’s fine to pick examples from radio, TV, the web or print — whatever catches your interest.

Where can you find examples of great CAR work?

Investigative Reporters and Editors, based here at the J-School, posts updates about investigative stories on its ExtraExtra! blog, where you can drill down to stories that used CAR. I subscribe to the RSS feed, so new stories pop up in my Google Reader.

Derek Willis, a newsroom developer at The New York Times, built a database of in-depth reporting at GreatJournalism.net, where you can find stories by data type used.

The Times and USA Today regularly run data-driven stories, so you might want to poke around on their sites. Search the sites for phrases like “data analysis”, “analysis of computer records” or “computer-assisted.”

 
Share this!
Reddit Facebook Twitter Delicious
  • Will Guldin

    This story was about food code violations in Michigan:

    http://www.mlive.com/news/muskegon/index.ssf/2011/07/food_code_violations_rampant_f.html

    I found it on the CAR website and it peaked my interest because I often see food code violations looked at from a small scope of view. You see the past week’s worth or a single restaurant is highlighted.

    This article though looks at three years worth of data and thousands of violations. They don’t explicitly say CAR was used, but I have no doubt it was, given the sheer volume of data and the analysis they did on that information. My main questions/concerns with the piece deal with the depth of the piece. It sounds like some work went into gathering all this information, but the reporting is a mile wide and an inch deep.

    They don’t pull out individual restaurants to see if some repeat offenders are in the system and why they are punished effectively to make sure the violations don’t keep happening. They also don’t talk to any real people. I’m not sure how they would’ve found people with serious food-borne illnesses, but it would’ve help the story be more about people and not just numbers.

    The numbers are important, but I don’t think they should be the end product of reporting.

    -Will Guldin

  • Katy Bergen

    My story explores a disproportionate amount of bank loans to white communities over black communities in Atlanta neighborhoods. I can’t remember exactly how I found it, except it came from a series of Google searchings that led to a website called Power Reporting

    The story was part of a large series of stories by the Atlanta Journal Constitution (http://powerreporting.com/color/)  but I analyzed the first story for this assignment:http://PowerReporting.com/color/1a.html

    The Atlanta Journal Constitution analyzed six years of 6.2 billion in bank lending in 64 neighborhoods and found that whites are five times as likely to get home loans from banks in Atlanta.This story grabbed my attention because to me it demonstrates the ultimate achievement in journalism, exposing a flaw/problem/evil in a system that is supposed to be equal and fair. I also have always been interested in stories exploring racial inequalities. I think they are important in a world that likes to tote that racial divides are a thing of the past (though this story is dated — 1988, this sentiment still applies to our modern day world)I do not have tons of questions after reading this story, and I was impressed with how transparent the paper was in sharing their formulas and process, but here are a few:- This story focuses on white and black populations. And while, they may be the dominant communities in this area, I’m wondering if there are other minority groups the story could have included or explored.- Would the story be stronger if it included a personal story from someone affected by this issue? What are the benefits to have a number-filled story followed by more detailed personal stories versus have a story that combines both?

    • Anonymous

      This was the first series using CAR to win the Pulitzer Prize, BTW.

  • Du Anqi

    This story is about the achievement gap among different racial groups in New York City.
    http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/16/nyregion/16gap.html?scp=1&sq=otterman%20gebeloff%20achievement%20gap&st=cse&pagewanted=1

    It was one piece of a large project SchoolBook covered the schools in New Yokr by The Times and WNYC. And this piece is done Robert Gebeloff, who is a member of The Time’s CAR team, who is very good at exploring the news by analyzing the data.

    I found this article, “Triumph Fades on Racial Gap in City Schools”, a very good example of using statistics to interpret the story.

    The article showed the results from the 2010 test and use percent numbers to tell readers how well each group met state standards on different subjects, like “Among the students in the city’s third through eighth grades, 40 percent
    of black students and 46 percent of Hispanic students met state
    standards in math, compared with 75 percent of white students and 82
    percent of Asian students.” Readers can get to know that there is a racial gap from this data. I think numbers can always tell a more convincing story, but here I think it would be even better to see a bar chart that can visualize the gap.

    Also, the article also incorporated the report form Educational Testing Service, which allows readers who wants to look further into the facts more available documents.

    In addition, by comparing the previous and current data, the story let people see a change over the years and also a trend or a goal in the future.

    I initiated several question after reading this article. First of all, is the test score, especially the pass/fail standard, the best or the only way to judge the students’ performances?
    Secondly, is that possible that more white and Asians go to better school which probably equipped with better teacher crew? Thirdly, why the years from 1999 to 2004 had progress on this issue particularly?

    Overall, I think numbers is a very helpful tool for reporters to look deeper into a story and also make the story more convincing to readers.

    –Anqi Du–

  • Melissa Roadman

    The story I chose was about malnutrition in California hospitals. I found it on the Extra!Extra! blog. It caught my attention because I am from California and have relatives who have spend prolonged periods of time in hospitals there.

    http://www.ire.org/extraextra/car/california-hospital-chain-reports-high-rates-of-malnutrition

    The article says that there are “usually high malnutrition rates” for Medicare patients. They are suffering from kwashiorkor, an illness commonly found in children in underdeveloped countries. My biggest question is regarding the context. It says that the 16.1 percent that was reported is 70 times the state average, but how many Medicare patients generally suffer from this? Is it usually more than the state average—is there an age group that is usually more affected than another? In addition, are these patients being diagnosed long-term care receivers? Are they suffering from other illnesses? Do they have long hospital stays or are they just not having proper nutrition in their daily lives?

    I also wondered about the disease itself. There is very little information given about what kwashiorkor is. How is it developed? Does it have something to do with the food served in hospitals or vitamins not being administered? Are there prevention measures the hospitals are taking or are planning on taking?

    The article was a good start, but lacked a lot of essential information. I believe CAR could be used to further this investigation and pinpoint exactly who is at fault for this malnutrition problem.

  • Rosellen Downey

    My story is from the Santa Cruz Sentinel: www.santacruzsentinel.com/ci_17530239

    I chose this story because this is my hometown paper and I grew up reading it. I wasn’t sure if the Sentinel even had any CAR experts on staff, so I decided to search and see if they were writing any stories using database information. It turns out they are and I picked this story because it has to do with city government salaries, which is a topic I am personally interested in. 

    This article includes a lot of interesting information with regards to furlough pay, overtime costs and city employees that have been hired or have retired in the past year. The number one thing that piqued my interest though involves the “Top 25 Earners.” The top 25 paid city employees in Santa Cruz are all men. The article makes mention of this and even adds that seven of the city’s 13 departments are run by women but that they don’t make up the highest earners. I think that a variety of follow up stories could be written about this one fact. If I was writing this particular story I would ask questions like, why are women running more than half the departments but none of them are on the top 25 earners list? How long have these women been in these positions and how often do they receive raises? Most of the top 25 earners work for the fire or police department, how many women work for the fire or police departments in high level positions? I think a lot of interesting information could come from these inquiries and it might be possible to determine whether or not hiring and promotion practices have been fair.

    Another intriguing portion of this story is that police overtime pay went up forty-percent from the previous year. The Chief mentioned that this was due to a higher crime rate and a 8 officer vacancies. The article mentions that hiring had been slow but doesn’t go into depth on this topic. My questions for this are: how long does it take to fill 1 vacancy, let alone 8? What areas are they recruiting from? Is there currently an issue with finding and/or training good police officers? Why were there 8 vacancies in the first place, did people quit? Were they laid off? Or were these new positions? I think a follow up story could be written on this subject that would help fill in some of this information for readers. 

    -Rosellen (Rosie) Downey

  • yue xi

    From PolitFact: http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2011/sep/03/mitt-romney/mitt-romney-says-500000-federal-workers-earn-more-/

    I picked this piece from PolitFact because it really shows that data can be powerful to reporters and politicians alike. And sometimes the two species are doing the same thing. If you try to make some accusation or some claim, you have to find some data to back them up, or make those figures speak for you. In this case, Mitt Romney says 500,000 federal workers earn more than $100,000 a year.

    Is it true? The PolitFact found it almost true. Romney says those who earn more than $100,000 a year accounts for a quarter of federal workers but the actual figure is 21.5 percent. Not too wrong for a politician’s standard, right?

    The report also provided a link to U.S Office of Personnel Management: http://www.fedscope.opm.gov/employment.asp  
    It is the place where Romney found his claim and where news media can make a buzz, if you take your time to dig deep enough.

    Question wise, I’d like to further ask if those federal workers really deserve earning $100,000 or more. It seems to be lots of money, but Mitt Romney didn’t give context.  For example, what kind of job do those federal workers do? how much do many bankers with similar skills or position earn each year? Without some comparison, the number itself doesn’t make much sense to me. 

    –Yue Xi

     

  • Anonymous

    The story:
    Some States Still Leave Low-Income Students Behind; Others Make Surprising Gains.

    http://www.propublica.org/article/opportunity-gap-schools-data

    I am interested in this story because the reporter took on a hard task of measuring education outcomes and compares the results from different states. Also, I think this story touches on an deeper concern with high public interest: the opportunity gap between the rich and the poor. A story like this will definitely pose new questions to the school system that matters much to the social development and need to be addressed by the government urgently. Moreover, I would like to learn about the methodology used by the reporter to find appropriate sources, make sense of the data and evaluate performance of various states comparatively. 

    I set out with these questions in mind: which data can be used to evaluate the education opportunity? How are the “poor” and the “rich” students are defined? How to measure the opportunity gap between the two groups? how to prove that such a gap will actually affect the futures of students from low-income families? How to compare different education outcomes among different states? Are there any potential pitfalls in data collection, and any possible errors in data analysis and comparison?

    The author uses federal data on numbers of high-school students enrolled in high-level classes and compares with families’ income level of the students. The results turn out that Florida is outstanding in providing equal access to education and actually reaps the fruits in students’ performance.

    However, this report receives much criticism from comments. Readers cast doubts on many aspects of this story. And I have further questions based on those comments:

    (1) For those poorly performing states, do students have unequal access to higher-level courses, or do they just deny to enroll in such classes?

    (2) Does enrollment in advanced classes sufficient in evaluating education outcomes? What are the percentages of students from different states who are finally pass those courses?

    (3) Does the story take into consideration other types of high level classes such as Dual Enrollment? Will the results be different in some states if re-evaluated based on such data?All these doubts are not well-addressed in this story.

    However, in general, I think the reporter did a really good job in identifying this topic, working on it creatively by CAR, and presenting a tangible picture on an otherwise abstract social issue.

  • Lindsay Cooper

    I found an article in the Chicago Tribune using CAR about, well, Cars!
     
    http://www.chicagotribune.com/classified/automotive/ct-met-speeders-main-20100320,0,6887161.story

    This article interested me because I’m pretty sure all of us, or at least most of us, sometimes let our driving speed get a little out of hand.  Sometimes we’ll get stopped and receive a ticket and we naturally try to get those taken off our license to avoid getting our license revoked. 

    I thought it was interesting how the reporter found out that over 1,100 people involved in speeding cases got those tickets taken off their record. The reporter had to do some investigating if those incidents were off the record.

    The reporter also had to utilize some sorting and math skills to find out the percent of those cases that involved drunk driving as compared to the non-drunk speeders. Also, the reporter sorted out the fastest speeders who had the tickets taken off the record.

    I think articles and investigative reporting like this can lead to many further stories.  For example, a reporter could look into why this is happening and how easy it really is to get this type of speeding ticket off your record. I’m sure there are plenty more stories you could pull from data such as this.

    • Anonymous

      A good mix of data and records. It’s also interesting to look at speeding ticket data and see how fast drivers can go before they’re hit with a violation.

  • Anonymous

    My story is from the Fox DC affiliate about the amount of taxpayer money Representatives are using to finance vehicles for themselves:

    http://www.myfoxdc.com/dpp/news/investigative/fox-5-investigates-congress-cars-080111#ixzz1U04u1jAQ

    I found this report to be interesting for a variety of reasons. First of all, it is always interesting to see the disparities between what members of Congress say and what they do, and I think this article highlights that disparity particularly well. Political news is something that I think many people have an interest in, and articles like this find a way to avoid falling into the general political reporting style of simply by following press conferences and reporting what the politicians are saying.

    The CAR reporting behind this article was also very intriguing. This information seemed to be available to the public in one form or another, yet obviously they wouldn’t have the time or inclination to sort through the thousands of pages of data in order to find out this information, or even know what to look for. This report takes the vast amount of varied information within those financial reports and streamlines it into a format that makes everything much more comprehensible for the average reader/viewer.

    I’m curious to see how they started coming up with this story, if they were just going through these expense reports and happened to notice a pattern, or if they decided that looking into the Representatives use of cars would be a good story and then went to see if there was data to back it up. I would have been interested to see the response from any of these politicians, which I think is one of the flaws of the report.

    • Anonymous

      A great example from TV by Mizzou grad Tisha Thompson.

  • Siwen Li

    The story I found is from
    The New York Times about the low college-ready rates in New York.

     

    http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9902E5DD113EF936A25755C0A9679D8B63&ref=robertgebeloff

     

    The primary reason the
    story interests me is that it’s about education which I concern a lot. More
    importantly, the headline is really compelling. Only 37 percent? Really? In New
    York? All those question marks I think can are those keeping the reading
    following all the way through the whole story, also those which show the power
    of numbers.

    As reading, I find some
    more interesting details. For instance, on the day when the data was release
    Mayor Bloomberg kinda distracted the public from focus of the dismal low
    college-readiness to the continuously increasing graduation rate. That is good
    catch, which also can serve as a proof that CAR is not CR. Reporters are not
    only data collector. They also observe and think based on and out of the data.

    Sorting out tons of data
    into different perspectives is really a demanding skill. It’s interesting to
    know that regarding to the low college-ready rate, there is still difference in
    terms of racial group and location such as city and school district. What is
    also smart is that the reporter put the increasing graduation rate alongside
    the college-ready rate, showing there must be some problem with high school
    education.

    I think the story could
    be better by providing a complimentary line chart demonstrating the trend of
    both two rates, which can be more convincing and easier to understand than
    text. And I’d like to know what will happen to a student who enters college though
    not ready defined by the community. How does that bother student and teachers?

     

    I’m curious to see how
    they started coming up with this story, if they were just going through these
    expense reports and happened to notice a pattern, or if they decided that
    looking into the Representatives use of cars would be a good story and then
    went to see if there was data to back it up. I would have been interested to
    see the response from any of these politicians, which I think is one of the
    flaws of the report.

  • Nicole Garner

    I stumbled across the New York Times’ “In New York, Number of Killings RIses With Heat.” While it seems like a story we’ve all heard before (increased temperatures mean increased violence), I was interested in how the Times’ handled the correlation between the two. Generally, the reporter used the news peg of increased summer murders to discuss the trend in fewer murders in NYC.

    What really interested me about this article was the way the reporter used the data to express the story – such as with detailed information in the lead (really using the data to grab the reader) as well as an interactive map showing the location of major reported crimes throughout NYC.

    What confused me, though, was that there was never a mention of where the information came from. As a journalist, I know the reporter probably had access to police records and blotter reports; but as a reader, I am left wondering where the information came from.

    http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/19/nyregion/19murder.html?pagewanted=1

  • Waqas Naeem

    I looked at the first of a series of stories done by the
    Pittsburgh Post-Gazette that examined air pollution, and its possible
    connection to higher mortality rates, in southwestern Pennsylvania: http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/10346/1109168-114.stm I found
    this series through GreatJournalism.net.

    I selected this story because I’m interested in health,
    science and environment reporting, and this is one epic series when it comes to
    those reporting genres. To begin with, the Post-Gazette reporters went over 9
    years of data for 746 municipalities in 14 Pennsylvania counties using the
    state Department of Health’s mortality rates database. They studied this data
    for three disease categories (heart, respiratory and lung cancer), statistically
    adjusted their data to account for the old age of southwestern Pennsylvania’s
    population, calculated expected mortality rates and compared them with actual
    deaths to determine how each municipality’s status relative to the national
    average, mapped the mortality rates and used EPA data to point out sources of
    pollution on the maps.

    The resulting maps showed high mortality rates – higher than
    the national averages – around the coal-fired power plants and factories in the
    region, indicating that air pollution might be one of the factors behind the
    skewed number of deaths.

    The first story in the series gives a gist of the problem
    investigated by the Post-Gazette, and is loaded with numbers, mostly showing how
    much the death rates – absolute numbers and percentages – in southwestern
    Pennsylvania are above the national average.

    I liked that the story provided context by describing past
    and present industrial activity in Pennsylvania, and a description of major air
    pollutants in the region. The reporting, on just this first story, was
    extensive. Overall, the Post-Gazette used their “study” to interview 150 people,
    including scientists, politicians, power plant owners, and members of the
    public. A sample of these sources appeared in this first story. One of the most
    interesting parts of the story was how the government officials reacted to the
    study.

    I understand that Post-Gazette’s efforts might be difficult
    to reproduce for other publications, but I feel that their reporting really shows
    the extent to which CAR/data reporting can help understand public health and environment
    problems and put a finger on the causes of those problems. I’m mostly impressed by the extensive work that went into
    this series and the transparency of the paper about their methodology (http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/10346/1109192-114.stm). 

    As
    far as questions are concerned, I felt compelled to know what steps the state
    and local governments have done to reduce air pollution over the years (because
    it seemed like it’s been a major problem in the region for many years). Also, has
    the EPA taken action against the sources of air pollution in the area? Have
    there been any class action lawsuits against some of these power plants (like
    there were against cigarette companies or asbestos manufacturers)?

  • Anne Christnovich

    I looked on the IRE website and found story on the Duluth News Tribune about how an energy company has spent almost $40 million in state and federal funding on a project that likely won’t reach its goal.

    The entire story’s hook rested on data scraped from a Freedom of Information request that detailed how Excelsior Energy spent Department of Energy funding. From there, they could figure out how their bottom line is matching up with promises made in the past. The company is denying that they’re running low on cash, and plans for restocking the company’s money don’t seem to exist. Without extra funds, a project to build a $2.1 billion clean energy plant won’t happen.

    http://www.duluthnewstribune.com/event/article/id/207407/publisher_ID/36/

    I selected the story because I’m interested in how politics affects the development of new energy/transportation technologies. To me, this story speaks to the clean burning coal initiative, and is a launch pad for a story about how Excelsior Energy investors could be affected before the year’s end.

    I would want to know more about the feasibility of clean burning coal, and more about why Duluth was considered a candidate for the DOE money. A little data research would tell what other areas of the country have received similar funding, and a few more FOI requests would reveal how that money is being spent and what it bought — or didn’t buy.

  • http://twitter.com/zach_murdock Zach Murdock

    A really interesting CAR story I read recently comes from the folks that do Outside the Lines on ESPN, and honestly they produce a lot of my favorite stories. This one took a look at the “random” draws that seed pro tennis players in Grand Slam events (the French/Aussie/US Opens and Wimbledon).
     
    It’s an enormous amount of data and I’m sure it took a whole team of writers/OTL researchers to put the data comparisons together, and the results are very, very interesting. Using statistics, they found that in seedings for the US and French Opens, draws for unranked players deviated from true randomness. Using simulations of the draw systems, OTL was able to produce what truly random seedings would look like, and compared that data to the difficulty of the real tournament seedings.
     
    The data suggests that the draws may not be random and heavily favor top seeded players. OTL’s truly random simulations pitted ranked players against tougher first round opponents much more often than the actual seedings at the US Open, and the report tries to uncover the reasons the data may not be truly random.
     
    These comparisons are very specific and the data is pretty complicated, but it’s a very good example of how a simple, hypothetical question (why do top seeded players always seem to face these crappy players we’ve never heard of?) can turn into an intense statistical analysis of a fishy sports stats anomaly.
     
    Questions I have with the article: how did they find out how the draw software worked? How long did the analysis take? This math is so complicated, how do you go about checking your work on something so in-depth? And armed with these statistics, how do you go about confronting USTA officials with your findings to try to get an explanation? I’d be afraid of officials shutting me out after such a harsh accusation.
     
    Here’s the link to the story online: http://espn.go.com/espn/otl/story/_/id/6850893/espn-analysis-finds-top-seeds-tennis-us-open-had-easier-draw-statistically-likely

    • Anonymous

      Didn’t know about this story…nice way to use stats to dig into sports reporting.

  • Sam Joseph

    I came across a neat article called “A demographic breakdown of who took, and passed, the test.” It’s a Times article located here: http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/02/16/a-demographic-breakdown-of-who-took-and-passed-the-test/?scp=5&sq=medina%20and%20stuyvesant&st=cse

    I guess what first pulled my attention to this article was the title. I never took the SHSAT, but I knew of its existence. The article spoke about the various different ethnic groups taking the test. I liked how they went about analyzing the data involved. They asked some basic questions and answered them promptly. What was really neat was how prep courses were set up for anyone to take, but the data showed it didn’t close the gap of between groups because everyone was taking prep courses as well. It was a solid piece of work.

    Nothing really confused me too much with this article. The reporters mentioned where they got all their data and wove it together well. I did have to read it three times to really grasp what was being said, but that’s just because of my inexperience with data reporting. Hopefully this class and reading more stories like this one will help me get out of my tendency to just see the raw data and instead see a story.

    • Anonymous

      Interesting, I  never heard about this data before either.

  • David Herzog

    testing

  • Kaikang Wang

    I looked on the IRE website and found this story by Washington Post about how the guns sold in U.S. linked to Mexican crime scenes. the link to the story: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/12/12/AR2010121202663.html?nav=hcmodule

    It is actually a years long investigative project on the way guns moving in American society. The story itself is amazing, with both solid evidence and human voices. One wonderful thing about this story is that, after they locate information from the documents, they actually got different people along the chain of the gun moving to tell their stories. 

    I select this story on one hand because I am very interested in how to humanize the data, and how to really “tell the story” based on the data. On the other hand, the topic itself also interest me a lot.

    I am not really confused by any part of the story. I am just really curious about how they got access to those data and what kind of process have they been through.

    • Anonymous

      Lots of CAR in this series by the Post. The were unable to get national gun trace data from the U.S. ATF bureau, so they got data from some states instead.

      Reporter James Grimaldi is a Mizzou grad, BTW

  • http://twitter.com/LeahBecerra Leah Becerra

    I found this article on the Wall Street Journal’s site: http://tinyurl.com/3pf6bad

    “Tidings are gloomy for holiday-job seekers”

    This subject interested me because my own place of employment is on a hiring freeze and I’ve been wondering what the holiday season will look like. I’m used to a lot of new faces before x-mas and black friday, but this year it looks like I’ll just be working more hours : (

    The poll looked at 21 store-chains and of those 25% said they planned to hire fewer seasonal employees this season, even though they’re expecting to see higher profits than in the past few years. This was the first presented issue of the piece but what seemed most interesting to me was that the reporter took the CAR information to find out exactly why employers are looking to hire fewer seasonal employees:

    “Stores are trying to hold down labor costs as they head into the holidays, because they fear they can’t pass on other cost increases, such as more expensive cotton, to their customers, said Craig Rowley, vice president and global practice leader for Hay Group’s retail practice.”

    This makes immediate sense to me, and I’m happy the reporter could get a real cause for something that directly affects me. The only things that’s missing here is a link to the poll results and listing of which retailers are included in it. The article mentions DSW as being apart of the survey but how is DSW doing market-wise right now? Who are the top-projectors going into this holiday season and what did they do to ensure the ability to hire just as many seasonal workers as in past years?

    • Anonymous

      I’m not sure whether the Journal used CAR on this one to do original reporting. It looks like they reported someone else’s survey results.

  • Samantha Sunne

    This Seattle Times article and interactive graphic (http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/flatpages/local/2010censussamesexcouples.html) outlines census data on the number of same-sex couples in Seattle and where they live.

    I found it really interesting just because I live in Seattle. It’s not a hugely dense project – they just put 2010 local census data into a Flash graphic – but it’s highly informational nonetheless.

    Seattle has had, as far back as I can remember, a “gay neighborhood” called Capitol Hill. That area does have the highest concentration of same sex couples, according to the map. But West Seattle, close to where I’m from, has the second-highest concentration, even though West Seattle has held any association with gay couples.

    I also find it interesting that the census data shares the number of female couples versus male couples, and ones with kids compared to ones without.

    • Anonymous

      This was a good local take on the New York Times story that we read for class.

      One of the reporters on the story, Justin Mayo, is a Mizzou grad.

  • Samantha Sunne

    I just tested that link and it didn’t work. Try this: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2015813789_census04m.html and click “Interactive graphic | 2010 census numbers on same-sex couples by neighborhood” on the right under the photo. Sorry!

  • Elisa Essner

    I chose the St. Louis Post Dispatch’s Aug. 14 article, “Charter schools show inconsistent results,” because of a personal interest in the performance of St. Louis City schools. I worked for six summers with middle schoolers who (in large part) ultimately ended up attending either one of the  charter or one of the traditional public schools discussed in this article. I also have a broader interest in education data, because I think it has a lot of clues about a community as a whole.
     
    In this article, the reporter used CAR to compare charter and traditional public school students’ results on standardized state tests. One of the things I find most interesting about CAR is its ability to confound common assumptions, which is what occurs here: “The numbers continue to show that charter schools — promoted as an alternative to the struggling SLPS — have yet to consistently offer superior results for the nearly 10,000 children who attend them. At the lowest-performing charter schools, pupils are six times less likely to pass exams than their peers at the city’s traditional public schools.”
     
    I didn’t really struggle to understand the reporting (CAR or otherwise). But because of my assumption, that charter schools are uniformly better than traditional schools, the reporter’s use of the data is not necessarily something that would have occurred to me. Reading this article made me realize that datasets probably work best when you’re open minded about the kinds of questions the information could yield answers to.
     
    http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/education/article_257a26a9-a103-5183-97cc-067ec0fde828.html
     
    -Elisa Essner 

    • Anonymous

      A good example, too, of what journalists can do with all that education data that’s easily downloaded in many states.

  • Anonymous

    Posted for Brian Johnson

    I really like this story. http://www.king5.com/news/local/Investigators-Some-ferry-workers-paid-to-travel-to-work-87024087.html
    This story interests me because I am from Seattle and have always enjoyed
    watching KING TV. I think they are the best station in the area and respect
    their reporting.

    The piece is clearly data journalism. By
    watching the video one can tell that the journalist, Susannah Frame, either got
    the information in an excel spreadsheet or had to put it into a spreadsheet.
    Some of the broll in the story is of printouts of documents with numbers in
    columns and rows. I imagine the reporter sorted the data to find who was
    earning the most money by traveling to work in comparision to what their normal
    salary would have been. This story grew and Susannah ended up creating a
    multi-part series from it. The KING 5 website shows that the station won a Du
    Pont award for the collective work. That is very impressive.

    My question are where or how did she get the
    idea for the story? How long did it take to get the data? Did she have to fight
    for the data and if so what tactics did she use?

    • Anonymous

      Great watchdog journalism — dogged reporting high pay for some public employees.

  • Anonymous

    Post for Alaina Zermeno

    http://www.jsonline.com/watchdog/114879194.html

     

    The story I found interesting is about lawyers in Wisconsin who,
    after committing criminal offenses including felonies, are still allowed to
    practice law. Some of these convicted attorneys even maintained their law
    licenses while they served time in prison; others had their licenses suspended
    but eventually got them back. Even when some of these attorneys were charged
    with committing crimes, they were able to get charges reduced or dismissed by
    completing a deferred program, during which they too maintained their law
    licenses. 

     

    The story argues that in Wisconsin, the legal system is for
    lawyers, by lawyers. Prosecution against attorneys moves slowly and according
    to a process of self-regulation. Reporters for this story determined that 40
    percent of attorney offenders who have received lenient sanctions for their
    crimes have gone on to reoffend. They also detail the criminal history of a few
    Wisconsin attorneys who either maintained their law licenses or eventually had
    them reinstated.

     

    The reporters for this story cite their database research to
    include “several databases from the Wisconsin court system” as well
    as information from Wisconsin’s “Consolidated Court Automation Programs
    (CCAP).” I’d really like to know exactly what information they pulled from
    each of these sources, and how they compared the two. I’d also like to know
    what databases were included in the “several” they used from the
    Wisconsin court system. In addition, is there a CCAP in every state, or a
    comparable equivalent? 

     

    They also mention using “state, federal and Supreme
    Court” websites as well as that of the State Bar. In using so many
    websites, it seems like most of the information these reporters used was public
    information, aside from the actual interviews they conducted. I’d like to know
    if at any point and time they had to file a FOIA request, and what sorts of
    resistance they may have encountered. In doing a story that uncovers the
    misgivings of legal representatives within the legal system itself, surely they
    ran into roadblocks. 

     

    The reporters also mention a lot of details involving the criminal
    cases brought against some of these attorneys. I’d like to know how they dug up
    details on several unrelated cases that span multiple decades. Is there a
    database for information like this, or did they seek out information on each
    one individually?

    • Anonymous

      Good story.  Even though WI appears to have a unique system, I’d be interested in seeing what’s going on in other states.

      BTW: One of the reporters, Ben Poston, is a Mizzou grad who worked in the NICAR database library.

  • Ljanvier

    This story was about water use in Milwaukee being the highest for lower income families in the city specifically family with one incomes because of where they live since more houses in their area are prone to have broken pipes and water leakage. 

    http://www.jsonline.com/news/milwaukee/98682339.html

     

     

    I found the “Water use highest in poor areas of the city,”  article very interesting because paying
    a water bill is something I haven’t had to think about until this summer when I
    moved off campus.

     

    I think that what Tanika Knight had to go through with her
    water problems is very unfortunate and makes it harder for her to cope because she
    doesn’t have any extra money to get a better water system. The system proves
    the statement right when stated,  “the
    richer get richer and the poor get poorer.” A s a single parent with one income
    it is hard enough for her, and any other extra bills she has to pay does not
    help.

     

    Milwaukee Water Works needs to look and research cases like Knight’s
    and understand they need to be more forgiving.   In addition, after
    looking at the water usage per day by zip code graphic it shocked me to see the
    amount billed to the address. It makes me realize I need to be more attentive
    when looking at my bills and make sure to check for leaks and broken pipes. 

    Laura Janvier 

    • Anonymous

      Like this one a lot, too. The reporter (Ben Poston, a Mizzou grad) used mapping and stats to make the connection. He had an earlier story that looked at disparities in filling potholes by neighborhood.
      http://www.jsonline.com/news/milwaukee/32580074.html

Set your Twitter account name in your settings to use the TwitterBar Section.