Research Stories

by Candace S. Hughes

The computer is now an essential on-the-job tool for both print and broadcast journalists. But reporters still must learn how to best use the new technology.

Steve Doig challenges his students every single day to use the computer to help enhance their stories and give context to the larger issues facing society. At the same time, he continues his own research to give American newspapers a view of whether their staffs represent the communities they serve.

Doig is a Pulitzer-prize winning reporter and editor. He is also a professor in the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Telecommunication at Arizona State University, where he holds the Knight Chair in Journalism. His specialty is computer-assisted reporting.

Every semester a dozen or more ASU journalism students learn to use the computer for research and analysis. Computers are now an essential piece of the modern journalist's took kit. They are just as important as a pen, notepad, or telephone. Maybe more important.

Students in the course use the computer to look at census tracts, elections results, and other information from a different perspective. They also learn to compile information that otherwise may not be readily available to the public.

"Our students look at databases and use mapping skills to analyze how to get data to give up its secrets," Doig explains. "It's a very hands-on class with a lot of real life exercises."

For example, students might use spreadsheets to analyze a set of crime statistics for a part of a city. They can do the same with election results, or actually do a regression analysis with education data.

Computer-assisted reporting as a course of study is not new to ASU. Such classes actually began back in 1990 when Professor Edward Sylvester created the course.

"ASU was the first university in the country to get a grant (from the Freedom Forum) to put on a computer-assisted reporting workshop for journalists," Sylvester says. "We did that every year for many years. We were teaching computer-assisted reporting while the whole concept was being developed," he adds.

"When we won the Knight Chair we were able to hire Steve—the best professional in the country doing this type of work. He came in and took over the program and made it the best," says Sylvester, who taught the class from 1990 to 1996.

Sylvester now teaches science and medical reporting. "Computer-assisted reporting is useful and a needed skill for any journalism job. What we do in science and medical writing is complementary," he says.

"ASU realized early that journalism students needed to know more about computer-assisted reporting," Doig says of Sylvester's efforts. A former Miami Herald reporter and editor, Doig now finds that the research techniques he used while working for the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation complement his teaching today.

"Many things still have a strong racial component in our country," Doig says. He routinely has students in his classes look at the general topic of unequal allocation of resources.

"Minorities have increased political power, but there is a racial part to it. To deal with these kinds of issues a newspaper relies on the sensibilities of its staff," he says.

Doig says the efforts of newspapers to improve diversity in their newsrooms have reached a peak. It is now declining despite the acknowledged need for the racial makeup of a news staff to reflect the community it covers.

In 2006, Doig received special recognition from Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism as part of its "Let's Do It Better! Workshop honoring outstanding coverage of race and ethnicity.

For details about Steve Doig's study of newsroom staffs across the country, go to http://powerreporting.com/knight. The site includes a state by state list of 1,410 newspapers and compares non-white employment numbers with the minority statistics of the circulation served.