CARR HOT SHEET - Fall 2002

In this Issue -
-York Daily Record series on Pennsylvania courts cited
-CATS models terrorist attacks, effects
-New Feature! What Do I Do Now?
-Mapping Notes
-FAQ's
-New Boot Camp Schedule
-CARR Mini Boot Camps offered

Congrats to York Daily Record!
CARR Project Wins Award

The York (PA) Daily Record has won the Schnader Award, the Pennsylvania Bar Association's highest award for journalism, for its "A Measure of Justice" series examining criminal sentencing practices in Pennsylvania. The three-day, 20-story series ran in April 2002 and grew out of an idea from YDR reporter Sean Adkins, following his participation in a Media Center Database 101/201 CARR Boot Camp.

Among the project's findings were that York County judges tend to be less tough in their sentencing practices than judges elsewhere in Pennsylvania, women are convicted more frequently in York County than in the rest of Pennsylvania, white men are more likely to be convicted there than blacks and Hispanics receive the toughest sentences. (Series and its supporting documentation).

Congratulations to Sean, Business Editor Rob Walters and a host of Sean's reporting colleagues in the YDR newsroom. The Media Center is nearing the completion of a multiple regression analysis that will be the basis of a concluding set of articles in project that are tentatively scheduled for publication in December. We'll keep you posted on this great series.

CARR in Homeland Security:
Using the Consequence Assessment Tools Set (CATS)

Want to know what is likely to happen to your city or region if it suffers a significant terrorist attack? And whether your area's law enforcement, public safety and medical first responders are adequately prepared for such an attack?

The Media Center is making available to journalists a software package originally developed for the Department of Defense (DOD) that can provide answers to these and many more critical homeland security questions.

The mountains of information and data Consequences Assessment Tool Set (CATS) puts at your fingertips can provide the core of critically important public service reporting by your newspaper. Are officials in your area really prepared, for example, to administer thousands of anthrax antidotes or to quarantine whole communities?

The CATS provides a comprehensive package of disaster prediction models for natural disasters like hurricanes and earthquakes and for man-made disasters such as terrorist attacks with "dirty," nuclear, chemical and biological bombs.

CATS projects likely fatalities, casualties and property damage based upon real-time weather and data drawn from more than 150 databases and map layers. These include the location of resources to support response to specific hazards, critical infrastructure facilities (communications, electric power, oil and gas, emergency services, government, transportation, water supply) and a variety of population breakouts using census data. CATS also lets you add databases for custom analysis.

Originally developed for DOD's Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), CATS has been available for several years to selected federal, state, and local government emergency response organizations nationwide. For information on using CATS, contact Dexter Ingram at 202-608-6227 or Dexter.Ingram@Heritage.org.

Media organizations that have used CATS in recent months include ABC News, CNN, Fox News, Hearst Newspapers Washington bureau, Rocky Mountain News, USA Today and The Washington Times.

Read the Albany Times-Union's CATS-based Veterans Day story about first responders preparations in the Empire State's capital.

What Do I Do Now?

You just finished a Database 101/201 CARR Boot Camp and you're back in the newsroom. That elation and anticipation you felt on the way home has ebbed and now its back to the real world. And your editor wants to know what you learned and to see it applied in a story.

Don't panic! "What Do I Do Now" is a new regular CARR Hot Sheet feature with story ideas and resources meant to help you do exactly that, begin applying what you learned in CARR Boot Camp.

Data mining is almost always a great step one. Did you know, for example, that Maryland has one Hispanic-owned oil and gas extraction firm? Or that Dallas has 200 women-owned firms in the transportation, communications and utilities fields, employing 6,059 people?

You can find such information and much more about your area at the U.S. Census Bureau's 1997 Economic Census and its database on Minority and Women-Owned Businesses in the United States.

The Census site allows you to filer the database to a specific state, county or metropolitan area and for a variety of types of firms. Focus on a particular category and get the data for your area.

Then start putting meat on the data bones. If you are looking at women-owned firms, for example, ask your local or state government for a list of contracts awarded to such companies. Be sure and ask for each contract's amount, award data and duration, program purpose, etc. Make sure you ask for this data in an Excel friendly format.

Ask also for data indicating the percentage these contracts represent of all the jurisdiction's contracts, going back at least four years so you can begin to identify trends. A little thinking about the data you receive will almost certainly lead to some important news stories about how women and minority-owned firms fare in your jurisdiction's contracting and procurement.

CARR data like this can also help identify great news features. Besides examining the data for unique or particularly large contracts, check with the local and state chambers of commerce for tips on particularly successful women-owned companies.

Go to resources like the Business Women's Network web site and search their databases. The women behind these firms are likely sources of multiple features.

Always remember that when the data mining or crunching is finished, your reporting is just beginning.

Want to talk about more "What Do I Do Now" story ideas or suggest one for a future CARR HotSheet? Contact Mark Tapscott at 202-608-6155 or Mark.Tapscott@Heritage.org.

Mapping - Notes

Adding a theme from x,y coordinates

When a table contains x,y coordinates, it is referred to as an event table, and it can be used to create a theme in ArcView. Events enable you to map data that contains geographic locations but which are not in a spatial data format.

Sources for x,y coordinates

A file of coordinates stores the exact location of features as x,y coordinates. These coordinates can be obtained by reading a map, measuring points on a view, field surveying, or using a GPS (Global Positioning System). X,y coordinates can be in any coordinate system and units, such as longitude-latitude or meters.

Adding a file to the project

You can add an INFO, dBASEIII, dBASEIV, or tab-or comma-delimited text file to your current project as a table. When you add a text file, ArcView reads each line in the file and places the text following each tab or comma in a separate cell. The first line in the file contains the field names for the table.

Creating a theme from a table

After a table is added to a project, choose Add Event Theme from the View menu and use the Add Event Theme dialog box to create a new point from the table.

2003 CARR Boot Camp Schedule Coming Soon!

The Media Center is planning on expanding the number Database 101/201 CARR Boot Camps offered in 2003. More funds have also been budgeted for advertising these events to more journalists.

A complete schedule of 2003 Database 101/201 CARR Boot Camps will be released in December. If you know a colleague in your newsroom who would benefit by attending a CARR boot camp, be sure and show them the new schedule.
For more information about enrolling and schedules, contact Mark Tapscott at 202-608-6155 or Mark.Tapscott@Heritage.org.

"Mini" Database 101 Boot Camps Available:

The Media Center continues to seek new ways of providing CARR training for journalists in the most convenient possible way. Recently, we received a positive response to condensed Database 101 Boot Camps for journalism interns from Knight Ridder Tribune News and Scripps Howard News Service.

These mini boot camps provide highly compressed half-day introductions to Newsroom Uses of Excel and Access. This approach can be useful as an introduction to CARR for skeptical and/or time-pressed newsroom colleagues.

Also during 2002, we took the CARR Boot Camp on the road for the first time, providing two days of training for eight editors and reporters working for the Army Times Publishing Co. newsroom. We are considering offering more boot camps on the road in 2003 if there is sufficient demand. Let us know if this sounds like something for your organization to consider.

For more information, contact: Dexter Ingram at 202-608-6227 or at Dexter.Ingram@Heritage.org.