Journalists – numbers are your friends!
Computer Assisted Reporting (or CAR) will probably turn most wordy types like 
myself off at the very first acronym. But actually, as much as some of us might loathe the thought of it, it’s another skill we should be adding to out kit belt.
Simply, CAR is the process of using raw data to get stories. Computer software such as Excel and other database managers are used to analyse it, from which the journalist can extract a story.
Such data can be requested via the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), for example, and sites like What Do They Know are making this easier to do (data can be requested by anyone, not just journalists)
Examples of where data from a FOIA has been used as a main source for an article is this one from The Times…
…And this one from The Guardian:
A good recent example would be The Telegraph’s MP’s expenses revelations.
But, as you can imagine, this sort of journalism will take time and effort. You need to know what you’re doing, and most importantly, you need to feel comfortable working with numbers and statistics. But it seems to me that the results will be some of the most rewarding and hard-hitting journalism – why?
Well, the material you’re working with hasn’t yet been interpreted by anyone else, it is pure – unadulterated by other sources and unaffected by opinion. There is a real chance to create a truly original piece of journalism.
Working with hard data, and collecting proper conclusions from it, will also give your story authority and a grounding in something real that cannot be disputed. Surely this is what many, if not every journalist strives for?
Sadly the trend for CAR isn’t as common in the UK as it is in the US, but hopefully the British media will begin to recognise and tap into the fact that there’s a whole new resource out there for good, quality journalism – something that right now, we couldn’t need more of.
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