| The Union-Tribune was just
a source of part-time employment for Cervantes, who
started out as a library researcher there while taking
courses at Point Loma Nazarene University.
But the journalism bug bit, and within four years she
found herself petitioning company executives to become
a full-time research analyst – a misnomer for
computer-assisted reporting, or CAR, specialist –
and get credit for it.
“Initially, I had no idea I would go into journalism,
but what interested me out of college is that we were
making an impact in the community,” Cervantes
said.
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“The media is the invisible fourth check-and-balance
on government, and I appreciate that. Especially in San Diego,
I am just really excited to be a voice for the public. We
are a newspaper that reports for 400,000 people.”
Cervantes first realized the importance of computer-assisted
reporting when she was conducting research for a census story.
Newspaper executives took notice, too. They started sending
Cervantes to CAR training seminars put on by nationally recognized
groups like Investigative Reporters and Editors, Inc., also
known as IRE, and the National Institute for Computer-Assisted
Reporting (NICAR).
“At that time, we had no CAR person. They were farming
out as much CAR work to me in the library as possible,”
Cervantes explained. “If there was going to be a numbers
story, they’d put me on it.”
That was in 2001.
She had enough
By 2004, Cervantes had had enough of doing a majority of
the work and not getting credited with a byline.
But it wasn’t until last July, when The Sacramento
Bee offered Cervantes a job, did Union-Tribune execs realize
that their only CAR specialist deserved a full-time spot in
the newsroom.
Cervantes got her first byline in September.
Now she is part of a watchdog-reporting team that’s
currently working on a story about the influence of labor
unions on city council and congressional races.
“I was the CAR cheerleader, always saying, ‘You
guys, it’s the wave of the future,’” Cervantes
said.
It didn’t take long for others to realize CAR and good
reporting go hand-in-hand. In fact, much of The Union-Tribune
staff’s Pulitzer-Prize winning report on the bribe-taking
of a congressman relied heavily on computer-assisted reporting.
“I understood as a social-science person that data
analysis is what you do to make an empirical statement of
fact,” Cervantes said. “Data, what it does is,
improves your authority, and that’s important for a
journalist. You know that what I don’t have is a hunch,
I have a database and I know this has happened ‘x’
many times by ‘x’ many people.”
And because the media industry is changing as newspaper readers
and television viewers turn to other outlets for information,
it becomes even more important for news groups to offer something
more.
CAR is that something more.
Making an impact
“You can have a tremendous impact on society,”
Cervantes stressed.
Talk about impact: The Union-Tribune’s Pulitzer-Prize
stories led to the imprisonment of the corrupt lawmaker and
former war hero.
Computer-assisted reporting also provides opportunities to
get readers more involved in the story – revealing data
on the Internet using graphics and mapping technology, for
example – is just one way to take advantage of multimedia
elements crucial to journalism today.
Cervantes offers the following advice to aspiring reporters:
• Dig into a specialization, such as CAR. “The
financial incentive alone is huge,” she said.
• Know basic math, including how to figure ratios and
percentages.
• Know how to sort and filter in the database Microsoft
Excel.
• In Microsoft Access, be able to sort, filter and
sum.
Beyond that, Cervantes recommends developing mapping skills
or delving into statistics programs, such as SPSS and UCINET.
The latter allows journalists to plug in names and associations
to create a schematic of how people are related, which can
prove useful when reporting on events like the Sept. 11th
terrorist attacks.
“A lot of reporters do CAR on the side because their
news organizations still do not see the value in it, and that
can be difficult,” Cervantes said. “It has been
a fascinating ride for me because I like talking databases,
and finding out what’s there. I am an intensely curious
person, and CAR is just this mysterious black bag you stick
your hand in and really look for trends – there is so
much potential for that, for finding what matters.
“It’s worth fighting for,” she declared.
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•
Danielle Cervantes, San Diego Union-Tribune
• Dave
Davis, Cleveland Plain Dealer
• Dan
Keating, Washington Post
• Tom
Merriman, Fox 8 Cleveland
• Doug
Oplinger, Akron Beacon Journal
• Craig
Pittman and Matthew Waite, St. Petersburg Times
• Mark
Schaver, Louisville Courier-Journal
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