Analytic
Journalism is:

Critical
thinking and analysis using a variety of intellectual
tools and methods to understand multiple phenomena and to communicate the
results of those insights to multiple
audiences in a variety of ways.

These tools and methods are far
more sophisticated than the traditional 5 Ws and H of classic journalism, but
they are rarely novel and often well known outside of journalism.  Indeed, analytic journalists consciously and constantly survey all other professional 
disciplines searching for methods that can be used by
journalists to do more insightful, meaningful stories.  The disciplines range from accounting
(forensic accounting and performance measurement) to medicine and public health
(epidemiology) to zoology (measuring relationships between species and
resources). 

There are some similarities
between computer-assisted reporting (CAR) and analytic journalism.  Both typically retrieve and analyze
quantitative data, or translate qualitative data into quantitative data for
more precise analysis, especially over time. 
Analytic journalists, though, seek methods beyond crunching numbers on a
spreadsheet or running filtering algorithms on a database.

Our working premise: Democracy only exists by the will and action of an informed
citizenry.  Ergo, citizens need to know:

·         
The state of their society if they are to make informed
decisions about what their government and society should be doing

·         
What is the condition of their government and society

·         
What the government and society are doing

·         
What the government and society plans to do

·         
How well the government and society are performing
relative to their own standards, the expectations of citizens and similar
institutions around the nation or world.

The fundamental questions
underlying all of this are:

·         
What do we journalists know and how do we know it?  (Just having someone telling us isn’t
sufficient, especially if they are telling us anecdotes.)

·         
How do we measure change and over time and place?

The winter 2004/2005 issue of ArcNews, published by ESRI, carries two stories about journalism institutions employing GIS.

* Newsweek Maps Out Hurricane Story With GIS and ESRI BIS Data: Fast, Accurate GIS Mapping Visually Enhances News Story

* CBS News Headlines GIS Mapping: 2004 Presidential Election Coverage

AARON RICADELA  writes in the NYTimes
Circuits section of an interesting piece of software that could give
infographic artists/reporters a fast leg-up on reporting a variety of
“interior” stories.  See March 10, 2005 http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/10/technology/
circuits/10next.html?oref=login

ORENSIC
experts who reconstruct crime scenes want to produce detailed drawings
that can stand up in court without disrupting sensitive evidence. But
creating hand-drawn sketches and taking photographs can take days and
disturb the scene. Computer-aided design packages that require
investigators in the field to enter data can be cumbersome, and results
can be difficult for jurors to decipher.

Now, a Canadian company is demonstrating prototype software, based
on advances in computer vision, that can stitch together a few seconds
of video from a hand-held stereo camera into a detailed 3-D model of a
room, including the people and the objects in it. Using Windows on a
laptop, the police or courtroom workers can zoom around the model to
view it from different perspectives, or click on its features to see
sizes, relative distances, areas and angles.

* The 1952 presidential election in the U.S. is a milestone in
the history of analytic journalism. CBS, working with Remington Rand
Corp. and an exit polling company, was in a position to predict
Eisenhower's sweeping victory in the electoral college thanks to a new
device called UNIVAC. But the network's journalists doubted the
accuracy of the computer's prediction. Click here to
see a portion of that coverage. (QuickTime .mov file)
See also: “In '52, huge computer called Univac changed election night.”  By Kevin Maney, USAToday 10/26/2004


* The UNIVAC computer was demonstrated on June 14, 1951 by
Remington Rand and its first customer was the U.S. Census Bureau. It
was the first commercial busines computer. http://www.historychannel.com/tdih/ram/0614.ram
[Requires Real
Audio plug-in]

* Perhaps the earliest example of a government using a binary
mechanical system to store and analyze data was the U.S. census of
1890. Here, however, is a newsreel
clip showing how the Czechs were using computers for their census
by the 1930s.

* The essence of analytic journalism is finding the tools and
methods of other disciplines and using them to better understand a
phenomena and tell the story. This segment from the CBS show “Sunday
Morning” illustrates well this transfer of method, technology and,
eventually, knowledge. Click here to
see the QuickTime .mov file.

English professor Don Foster's
unique view of the world — and literature — came to light when he
figured out that Joe Klein, who had been lying about his authorship,
really was the writer of Primary Colors.  In Author Unknown,
Foster lays out his personal history and interest in content analysis,
along with his methodology.  The result is a good read that can
show journalists how to use easily available tools to analyze text of
any sort.  Highly recommended, and plenty of used copies via the
online market.

“In Author Unknown, Don
Foster reveals a startling fact: since no two people use language in
precisely the same way, our
identities are encoded in our own language, a kind of literary DNA.
Combining
traditional scholarship with modern technology, Foster has discovered
how to unlock that code and, in the process, has invented an entire
field of
investigation — literary forensics — by which it becomes possible to
catch anonymous authors as they betray their identities with their own
words.”
Source: http://www.fsbassociates.com/holt/authorunknown.htm#order

The San Francisco Bay Guardian reports this week on the effects of
“contracting out” what had been government services.  The big loss
is that journalists — and, hence, the public — have lost access to its data and the power of
oversight.  

See S.F.
spends billions on nonprofit contracts without adequate oversight. It's a recipe
for disaster.
By Matthew Hirsch
Most public officials
don't know how to efficiently manage a government that does most of its work through
third parties.
http://www.sfbg.com/39/23/cover_foi_nonprofits.html

“Will Yancey, a Dallas accountant who specializes in
litigation
support, started compiling bookmarks of his favorite sites in
1995.  Today, his site offers users links to other portals as well
as to legal and political directories.” 
http://www.willyancey.com/forensic.htm


“Portals for Prying”, by Jennifer Saranow, The Wall Street Journal,
Technology Report, September 15, 2003, page R6.

It was in the early '90s, when JTJ began thinking about and researching
the process that results in the journalist's product.  It
eventually boiled down to the RRAW-P process:
Research–>Reporting–>Analysis–>Writing and finally
Publishing/Producing/Packaging.  The attached paper first appeared
in the Social Science Computer Review in 1994.