Students turn numbers into news

By Alissa Herbaly Coons
J-School Web Reporter

In addition to learning how to work databases and spreadsheets, the seven students in professor Dennis Swibold's computer-assisted reporting class tasted the thrill of investigative reporting this spring.

Their analysis of the campaign finances of Montana’s state legislators resulted in a series of articles based on the trends the class discovered in records of 90,000 financial contributions to Montana's senators and representatives. The project, "Money & Politics: A Special Report on Campaign Contributions to Montana's Lawmakers," put the student-researched stories and a searchable database of legislators and their donors on the Web.

The project is the most ambitious Swibold's class has undertaken in the five years he has taught it, he said, and it coincided perfectly with the 58th legislative session. The goal of the computer-assisted reporting course is to teach students database research and statistical analysis and help them investigate real-world situations — in this case, campaign finances. Swibold got the idea for the project from a similar class at Virginia Commonwealth University.

Before tackling their project, Swibold's students got an introduction to database and spreadsheet management through computer programs such as Microsoft Access and learned how to use them to find specific information or look for trends.

This gives reporters hard data and statistics on which to base stories, providing substance and depth to the average “he said/she said” reporting so many articles depend on, Swibold said. The training cuts down on students' fear of math and statistics and equips them to ask the right questions when writing stories about the donors, politicians and lobbyists whose records they analyzed.

"I didn't really know what I was in for,” said student Curtis Wackerle, who was initially intimidated by the scope of the project. “Once I realized it was basically an investigative reporting class, I really started to like it. I like how it encourages you to question, to ask big questions and go about finding the answers."

His story examined the phenomenon of politicians giving to other politicians, and his experience in the course got him "thinking like a journalist" and inspired him to break new ground in other investigative projects.

Student Jessie Childress said she started the course knowing no more about using computers for reporting than basic word processing and Internet searches. Childress said she enjoyed the empowerment of having computer-driven research in hand before conducting an interview, and she liked seeing all of the work with the database turned into well-researched stories at the end of the project.

"It opened my eyes to how all these programs should be used," Childress said.

The project was also more than a simple exercise in database management. "It opened students' eyes about politics," Swibold said. "I don't want to say that money controls the entire game, but I don't want them to be naïve and think that it doesn't play a role at all."

Compiling the necessary records for the project was a joint effort with the National Institute on State Money in Politics, a Helena-based, nonpartisan, nonprofit organization that, according to its Web site, is "dedicated to accurate, comprehensive and unbiased documentation and research on campaign finance at a state level." After the data is organized, the institute makes its information available to interested reporters, researchers and citizens, many of whom use the data in statistical analyses of their own region or area of interest.

"It takes a local knowledge to add meaning to the data," said Ed Bender, a UM-trained journalist who is now the institute's research director.

Swibold contacted Bender last semester looking for a way the class could get the information it would need for the project. They agreed that if the J-School paid for some extra labor in Helena, the institute would provide a database on Montana campaign contributions by mid-February.

"I thought it would be a great project," Bender said. This is the first time the institute has worked with a university in a data-sharing partnership, and he was not disappointed.

"They did a wonderful job with the stories and the Web site," Bender said. Working with the class to get the information analyzed and available to the public is "the kind of thing we hope to do more in the future," Bender said.

The computer-assisted reporting project also marks the first time that all of the financial information for political campaigns has been available and searchable before the legislative session’s end. The institute, which has limited financial resources and a staff of 18, doesn't usually finish compiling the financial records until June.

This timeliness led the Great Falls Tribune to run a story by student Bryan O'Connor on the potential financial impacts of Senate Bill 423, which was designed to raise the amount donors can give to state political campaigns and increase the limit for anonymous donations from $35 to $50. Intended to make financial reports easier for campaign treasurers, the bill would have also obscured the origins of 8 percent of donations. It passed through the Senate intact, but before the House reviewed it, O'Connor's story ran in the Tribune, which may have drawn legislators' attention to the increase in hidden donations. The bill passed the House, but without increasing the anonymous donation limit.

"It may have played some small part; who knows," O'Connor said. "It at least got the story on the radar—nobody really was aware of this."

O'Connor said the course was "by far the most useful" of any journalism class he has taken.

"I've probably doubled my knowledge of software and database management," he said. "Bigger than that, I think I've found a career path with this — I'm definitely going to pursue a career in some kind of investigative journalism."

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