The Power of Online to Take Specific Info to the Reader

Online media is overshadowing what you would call traditional journalism more everyday. Some are concerned that this will affect the validity of the journalism in our culture. I see their point in some ways, but there is something to be said for making new and different information more readily available to readers.

The investigative reporting that people like Chris Davis are doing at the Sarasota Herald Tribune is only enhanced by the graphics and databases made available to the public through their research. I was amazed at the amount of work put into one story about teachers’ rap sheets and how schools just “pass the trash” with teachers who require disciplinary action. It took five people, four months, for twelve hours a day, to go through 50,000 pages of public records to create a database that showed which teachers have been disciplined and why. I applaud these journalists for their dedication. Stories like these are important for insuring that the practices of our society are kept in the light.

Another interesting story that required much time and effort brought up a fifty year old murder case that was still on public file. I found it interesting that this case was brought up because a reporter was looking for another story. The reporters were able to reconstruct the crime scene from reports they found. They created an interactive graphic to allow readers to navigate through the crime scene and discover important clues in the case. Making news accessible and interactive will keep journalism relevant to the current generation.
I appreciated Davis’ comments on the payoff of this kind of journalism. Even though sometimes hours and hours of research may lead to a dead end, it could lead to a change in the laws. In the teachers story, administrators were given stricter laws on what they had to disclose about disciplinary action with a teacher who was let go. This law has the potential to stop the “pass the trash” pattern of sending bad teachers to other schools. This power to effect change is what makes journalism worth the work.

This kind of investigative database reporting intrigues me. I find it to be one of the most relevant ways of finding and displaying truth. Like with the teachers case, reporters can uncover truth about a situation in a systematic, research-based way, and then communicate it in a easy-to-use manner with a database or graphic online.