Institute for Analytic Journalism

Another unique investigation by The New York Times gets A1 play in this Sunday's edition (1 Oct. 2006) under the hed "Campaign Cash Mirrors a High Court's Rulings." Adam Liptak and Janet Roberts (who probably did the heavy lifting on the data analysis) took a long-term look at who contributed to the campaigns of Ohio's Supreme Court justices. It ain't a pretty picture if one believes the justices should be above lining their own pockets, whether it's a campaign fund or otherwise.

In any event, there seems to be a clear correlation between contributions -- and the sources -- and the outcome to too many cases. A sidebar, "Case Studies: West Virginia and Illinois," would suggest there is much to be harvested by reporters in other states.

There is, thankfully, a fine description of how the data for the study was collected and analyzed. See "How Information Was Collected"

There are two accompanying infographics, one ("Ruling on Contributors' Cases" )

is much more informative than the other ("While the Case Is Being Heard, Money Rolls In" ), which is a good, but confusing, attempt to illustrate difficult concepts and relationships.

At the end of the day, though, we are grateful for the investigation, data crunching and stories.

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All (Digital) Power to the People

by JTJ on Sun 01 Oct 2006 06:30 PM MDT

One of the major aspects of the Digital Revolution that has long intrigued us is how it is driving a shift in power away from institutions and people of traditional authortiy to the individual.

A great example of how this is happening was reported in today's (1 Oct. 2006) NYTimes. "A Town’s Architectural Shift, Chronicled Online" was started by Montclair, New Jersey resident Liz George. She is managing editor of Baristanet, a community Web site and forum, added an interactive map to the site to keep a record of teardowns in her town. The NYT reports:

"On Sept. 22, the Web site started a new feature to chart the town’s changing architectural landscape — an interactive map that shows teardowns, homes with historic designations and recent construction.

“'Maybe something like this will give people pause,' said Ms. George, 39, in her office at her gracious 100-year-old home. 'Knowing you’re having your house on the teardown map, knowing it will be part of this trend, I don’t think it has a positive implication.'

'The teardown issue has taken on a sense of urgency here after a developer bought the blue-shuttered Colonial-style house, on North Mountain Avenue, for $870,000 last fall and demolished it this summer with plans to build six town homes. The action led town officials to rezone about 200 lots — including the North Mountain Avenue property — from a designation that allows up to eight units on a single lot to a designation that allows only two. The developer has since dropped his plans and has put the empty lot up for sale.

Of course, a newspaper could have done the same thing, but so far as we know, none has. So the least the industry could do is supply the software apps, and maybe some instruction, to let citizens build their local databases.

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