Broadcast News Writing, Reporting, and Producing, 4th Edition

17  Computer-Assisted Reporting for Broadcast

By Brant Houston (© 2000 by Brant Houston)

In the past decade, computer-assisted reporting (CAR) has become part of many journalists’ day-to-day work and aided those journalists in creating high-impact, public-service stories.

CAR is the acquisition and analysis of electronic information and databases. It is the natural extension of using hard-copy (paper) documents, and many records described in Chapter 16, “Collecting Information from Documents,” have become electronic.

Although journalists need training to use CAR, the result—once they have had the training—is that they become proficient at finding, filtering, sorting, and analyzing public records. In the past, journalists might have taken days ...