The investigative team at The Dallas Morning News relied heavily on the data analysis skills of reporter Jennifer LaFleur. LaFleur has also led computer-assisted-reporting projects at the San Jose Mercury News and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. She has taught journalism at the University of Missouri and American University and is co-author of a book on computer-assisted reporting. (Read LaFleur’s tips for using data for investigative reporting here.)

But data mining skills are not just for journalists. Check out LaFleur’s tips for mining data in her column, Citizen Watchdog, which tells readers how to apply investigative reporting techniques in their own lives -- including how to background check daycare providers, where to learn about recalls of dangerous household products, and how to find out what information the government is collecting about you.

Tag(s): Accidents , Jennifer LaFleur , Trucking , computer-assisted reporting
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It's possible that you've never heard of Donald L. Barlett and James B. Steele. As reporters, they keep a low public profile. They are, some might say, "old school" investigative reporters – relishing the opportunity to plow through documents and databases to produce comprehensive investigations. Last week's EXPOSÉ spotlighted the duo's recent inquiry into one of the defense department's highest-paid “body shops." But Barlett and Steele have been exposing government and corporate malfeasance since 1971, when they started working together at the PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER -- a tenure that lasted 26 years until they moved to TIME magazine. Then, last year, TIME laid off more than 600 people in a budget crunch. The veteran reporters were among those let go -- a move that many decried as evidence of the downfall of investigative journalism in a rapidly shrinking industry.

Now contributing editors at VANITY FAIR, Barlett and Steele are digging back in and doing what they do best: hard-hitting investigative reporting. After careers that produced prize-winning investigations -- merited two Pulitzers and two National Magazine Awards, among other awards – they have set journalistic benchmarks for more than 30 years. A few of the highlights:

• In 1972, they analyzed more than 1,000 cases of violent crime in Philadelphia for “Crime and Injustice." It was the largest computer-assisted project of its time.

• Their PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER newspaper series "America: What Went Wrong" dissected the nation's ongoing recession and was so popular the paper received more than 400,000 requests for reprints. The nine-part series was published as a book in 1992.

• A TIME magazine series in 1998 exposed government economic incentives to businesses as a form of "corporate welfare" that turned "politicians into bribery specialists, and smart business people into con artists."

• In 2004, the two set out to diagnose how porous the U.S.-Mexico border actually was. Their investigation for TIME revealed that the border had grown less, not more, secure since 9/11.

Check back later this week for web-exclusive video of the pair discussing their work together over the past 30 years.

Tag(s): Donald Barlett , James Steele , computer-assisted reporting
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Now you see it, now you don't. That's the problem with the Internet, it's so impermanent. One day a website exists and the next day it's gone. For reporters doing research online, this can be infuriating.

When PITTSBURGH TRIBUNE-REVIEW reporter Carl Prine was researching emergency preparedness plans at sites containing large amounts of hazardous chemicals, he kept hitting the same wall. After 9/11, reports that were once accessible online to the public were suddenly erased from cyberspace. Almost. Using an Internet archive site called the Wayback Machine -- the investigative reporter's virtual time machine -- he was able to retrieve several reports from the EPA and other agencies that were no longer available on the sites at which they were originally posted.

Internet archives like the Wayback Machine take "cyber-snapshots" of websites periodically and store the data in a virtual library.

When Prine was researching the potential impact a chemical spill could have on surrounding neighborhoods, he went to a site called RTKnet.org, which stores information about chemical companies and environmental pollution. He knew of a map that showed vulnerable zones near DuPont facilities in several states. But when he went to the map's URL in 2002, it was gone. Check it out: http://www.rtk.net/wcs/vuln.html ... Nothing, right?

Then Prine searched the same URL in the Wayback Machine and selected a screenshot from before 9/11. Problem solved. See for yourself: http://web.archive.org/web/20010620031349/http://www.rtk.net/wcs/vuln.html

Prine also used the Wayback Machine to fish out a CDC report on possible chemical vulnerabilities and EPA "worst case scenario" data that showed people living near chemical plants how they might be harmed in the event of an unintentional release.

"It should be noted that all these documents were denied to me by FOIA, but accessed on the computer," Prine wrote in a follow-up e-mail to the Blog. "Ghosts in the machine, they live on."

"While these documents are denied by FOIA officers today, they obviously are freely available to terrorists who are savvy enough to know what the Wayback Machine is," Prine points out. "Which leads me to ask why the information was taken away? Is it to deny to terrorists essential targeting information? Or is it to deny to Americans the realization of these vulnerabilities? Perhaps both. Perhaps neither. We'll never know."

Tag(s): computer-assisted reporting
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