My first assignment for my CAR independent study was to get some data from the Alachua County Health Department.

Professor Armstrong charged me with getting all current salaries, as of Jan. 1, 2008 for nurse practitioners and physician assistants working in the Alachua County Health Department, both full and part time. It took a couple of tries to get someone on the line. Then they asked me to send an e-mail. But in 3 business days, I had the data. Much easier than I thought.

I know all data requests won’t be so easy, but it’s good practice in asking for it. The experience was similar to what I did to get a gas prices map on The Independent Florida Alligator’s Web site: Figure out who has it, find a contact number or e-mail address, and ask.

My next assignment was to decide on a story I wanted to do the data analysis for. I had a lot of trouble with this, because I had to choose something that was timely, accessible, etc.

After going through a bunch of ideas

• location trends for car accidents in the gainesville area. are holidays/game days a factor?
• something about uf sustainability. the website was basically a bunch of press releases, but i bet if i went and asked they could dig me up some data.
• I looked at http://earmarkwatch.org/ and found that all the earmarks for the state of Florida are for defense bills. UF and some other Florida universities were getting some cash too.
• go back to crime or poverty :( i’m trying to avoid these because they seem too obvious/easy.

I finally hit on something:
Given that Crist just put out the budget for public universities and UF is apparently not getting any help, I think that would be a good direction to take. I can compare funding for public universities in Florida and maybe other states, compare growth in attendance, that sort of thing. Look at how funding for UF has changed now that we have fewer people in legislature and other schools are building strength. (UCF, SFU) Is UF still the “flagship” university? I’ll also be looking at tuition.

So the next step is to figure out how far back to look. I’ll start at 10 years, hit up Lexis and see what I can dig up.

I’m much more confident now that the topic is locked down.

I’m doing an independent study on Computer Assisted Reporting with Professor Cory Armstrong in the Spring. I was told at a couple of job interviews that I need CAR experience, but the University of Florida takes data no further than the Fact Finding class.

So I’m going to find a dataset, explore it, and hopefully be able to produce a story package.

Right now I’m doing some research on different datasets currently available, but I’m having trouble narrowing down my subject.

I’ve been looking at some PEW studies for ideas on what sort of data to look at, as well as the IRE Database Library.

Some ideas so far:

• Campus Crime: compare Florida colleges or SEC colleges or just look at UF crime
• Walter Reed: I’m not sure how to find this data, or if it is readily available. But it was one of the seriously under covered stories listed by PEW. This could be taken more broadly: reduced funding in VA hospitals, funding vs. number of troops vs. number of living vets, 2001 to present for all kinds of money issues, number of wounded, currently enlisted, vets no longer enlisted, maybe also insurance
• Fluctuating Gas Prices
• Tasering Cases in Florida

Edit: I’m also trolling the Sunlight Foundation’s “Insanely Useful Web Sites.”

That’s it so far. (Thanks to Mindy for the help.)

Picking a subject has always been the hardest thing for me. I just want to look at everything!

Suggestions, as always, are welcome.

Applied Fact Finding was a great class for me.

In class we reviewed news stories that were seeded or based entirely on analysis of public records. I learned how to find local and state records on all topics: “campaigns and elections, property, business, health care, court procedures, environment, education, online and library research, FOIA requests, computer-assisted reporting, and Excel.” (from her description of the class)

I was amazed and a little perturbed by how many parts of people’s lives are available through public records and how easy they are to find once you know where and how to look. I’m all for open access, but not to my life.

I love nothing more than to think of a question and use the Internet to find an answer. For this class, my questions were more specific, and limited to the life of one person (who despite numerous marriage licenses was extremely boring). And occasionally, we had to use actual books.

I was further intrigued by the possibilities for journalism that can come from analyzing and tracking public records.

But my favorite segment of the class focused on Web search. Of the two choices available for a book review assignment, I read John Battelle’s “The Search”. I now recommend it to my friends along with “Atlas Shrugged” and “Stranger in a Strange Land”.

This is a class I would take over again if I could. In my mad rush to learn everything, sometimes I’m unable to slow down and pay attention to something that needs and deserves a little patience. Because of this class, there are randomly scattered CAR (Computer Assisted Reporting) -related Web sites among my del.icio.us bookmarks and Google Reader. I only wish there was as much emphasis on CAR in journalism education as there is on multimedia.

Here’s the resource Web site from the class.

Al Tompkins posted this great interview with David Simon, assistant city editor at The Frederick News-Post, about the Forgotten Soldiers project.

The project tells the stories of soldiers who have been unaccounted for in 5 wars.

The project began with a simple press release about an American Legion dinner to honor the county’s sole Vietnam War veteran who remains unaccounted for. He’s been featured in our paper a number of times, but we began wondering if veterans of other wars might be unaccounted for.

The interview is inspiring, and the project is very comprehensive, if a little disorganized.

The entire project includes maps, databases, articles, timelines, individual stories, a guestbook, AND a pretty big multimedia package.

Like most huge projects, there’s an organization problem. What do I click on first? Where do I start, where do I finish? How do I know if I’ve already read this part? Etc.

It makes me want to go digging around in public records and databases. I just need a topic to start with.

Edit: I forgot to include the all-important link.

Yesterday, MSNBC published a fantastic report on journalists who made campaign contributions from 2004 to 2007.

This is a huge deal, because the trust of the public in newspapers rests on the objectivity and transparency of the journalists.

But I feel almost as though MSNBC went out of its way to make me not want to read the entire article.

It is always a good idea to publish the findings of an investigation like this in plain English, so that if someone screwed up, it can be pointed out. But I got through the first five contributors before I thought “Well, these people suck,” and left the Web site.

Where’s my data visualization?

Not only do pretty graphics help me to understand the information better, I’ll stay on your Web site longer.

What they could have done:

• Mug shots of each journalist with a hover feature.
• Divide by the news outlet, when you scroll over a graphic for each one it offers a list you can click on to the details.
• Show me how much money was given to each party.

I know that there is a lot of information here. 114 people, how much they donated, when, to whom, and comments. That’s hard to split up. But this is an important story. It really calls for a package of graphics, not just a long block of text.

I’m always on the lookout for different ways to keep track of the political realm. It is an area that is very hard to cover well, concentrating on the issues without getting caught up in the “who has more money.” I believe it is an area that newspaper have so far failed to cover well. So I turn to the Internet.

The Washington Post has a Campaign Tracker, which lists and maps the campaign events of the 2008 presidential candidates. For each candidate, it lists the state and city with the most events, as well as the top state for fund raising. You can see the results by candidate, date and state, and there’s also an RSS feed. This is a nice start, but its focusing on the least important aspects of the campaigns. I’d like to see the issues candidates represent, whether or not they are being consistent, what groups are they getting support from, and links to every article in which they are mentioned.

EDIT: Derek Willis of the Post pointed out that I totally missed the candidate profiles, finance filings, and primary information linked to the Campaign Tracker.

WashingtonWatch reveals the costs behind proposed U.S. federal legislation and regulation. The site also asks for comments, allows responses to a poll and allows Bill summaries to be edited. The cost of a bill is broken down into “cost per family” which makes it easier to digest. Just looking at some of those costs makes me wince.

I may just be getting cool enough for people to send me press releases, cause I got this in my inbox the other day from the Congresspedia Associate Managing Editor:

• Get an early look at Congresspedia’s new legislative section

• What’s McConnell Hiding?’ Win $500 for getting Sen. McConnell to answer on the record

• LOUIS—a new database of documents from the Congressional Record, congressional bills and resolutions, congressional reports, congressional hearings, GAO reports, presidential papers and the Federal Register.

• MAPLight.org federal money & politics search engine launched (so far only California and U.S. Congress)

• Open House Project delivers recommendations to increase transparency on Capitol Hill

I really like some of these ideas: pinning politicians down, easy search of Congressional documents, following paper trails and shining a light on Capitol Hill are all great things to put out there. And not necessarily things I expect from my newspaper.

Google will be helping Arizona, California, Utah and Virginia make public records available and easy to find online.

Help Florida! While our records are pretty much online, its a ridiculous pain to find anything…just ask anyone from UF’s Fact Finding class.

The Scoop is an amazing Web site where Computer Assisted Reporting is documented and then sorted into categories by any means your geeky heart could desire.

Today’s entry is from the Florida Times-Union, a piece called Homicide 360.

Writers Jim Schoettler, Paul Pinkham and Steve Patterson researched the 364 homicides - whether criminal, accidental or justifiable - that occurred between July 1, 2003 and June 30, 2006. That included learning the backgrounds of victims and killers.

Schoettler and Pinkham studied police investigative reports, prosecutors’ files and autopsy findings, then recorded the information in a computer database. They interviewed killers and cops, prosecutors and defense lawyers, judges and academics, crime witnesses and victims’ families.

With support from Duval County’s chief judge, homicide suspects’ confidential juvenile court files and pre-sentence reports were opened. Patterson coordinated and analyzed database records of each killing and collected other records. He also developed a database that tracked homicide suspects’ prior arrests and the outcomes of those cases.

I just finished a course on public records last semester, and it’s really cool to see what can be done with some patience and an affinity for numbers.

The feature is also a great example of how news stories should work online. From any one place in the story, you can move to any other place. Beautiful.