John G. Cole

For one night in 1993, it seemed that my newspaper reporting career would be tragically short-lived. If not for John Cole giving me a second chance, I probably wouldn’t still be in journalism and certainly not at USA TODAY.

Cole was the editor of the first newspaper I ever worked for. Earlier today, friends and colleagues gathered at a memorial service in Avon Lake, Ohio to remember Cole, who died unexpectedly this month at age 61.

Most of what I have to say has already been quoted in the many obituaries (Lorain Morning Journal, Cleveland Plain Dealer, Elyria Chronicle-Telegram) and columns (Richard Osborne, Andy Young) written about Cole’s passing.

Osborne glosses over the embarrassing details, but it’s true that Cole once fired me. He later told a colleague, ”Do you know the two best decisions I’ve ever made in this job? The first was firing Korte. The second was re-hiring him.”

Osborne also refers to a memo Cole posted on the newsroom bulletin board, circa 1996, that I still keep posted on my cubicle wall in Washington — 15 years and three jobs later. Despite all the changes in the industry, it’s still a recipe for a great newspaper. And it summarizes John Cole’s legacy better than I ever could:

A REMINDER

I think it’s important for us to remember what The Morning Journal is, what it stands for, what it projects.

I want us to develop a firm sense of who we are in relation to our competition. We can dominate this market if we can establish a strong, distinctive personality.

Here are some of my thoughts on what I want us to be.

I would rather be interesting than important. It would be nice to be both, but if I had to choose, I’d choose interesting.

I want us to be colorful and attention-grabbing, but not sensational. It’s often a difficult line to draw.

It’s important to me that we’re well-written (both copy and headlines) and accurate. I want us to have a good sense of humor.

I dread being boring and I’m not proud of us when we hurt someone through carelessness or inattention.

I want to sell newspapers and I believe we can do that by touching peoples’ lives by touching their emotions.

I want stories and pictures that make me feel something mad, sad, glad, scared.

I want courage, compassion, passion.

I want us to stand up for someone who needs our help.

I want us to omit needless words. See Rule 21, Strunk White.

I want us to have fun, be positive, be thoughtful.

I want us to write about families, jobs, crime, health, environment and the future. I want to know about relationships, personal health and fitness, fashion, consumer issues, trends and influential people.

I want a paper where anything, from any section, can end up on page 1 because it’s interesting.

USA TODAY front page, January 5, 2011

Last week, USA TODAY published an investigation into orphan earmarks — the $13 billion in highway spending directed by members of Congress to pet projects but never spent. In all, we found that nearly a third of highway earmarks over the past 20 years have gone unspent.

First, let me give to Cezar what is Cezar’s: The genesis of the story — and the initial reporting and data gathering — came from Cezary Podkul, a financial journalist based in New York City and a fellow at the Stabile Center for Investigative Journalism at Columbia University. Cezary worked on the story for four months before coming to USA TODAY with the gist of the story almost fully developed; we did two more months of reporting and rewrote it to fit the newspaper’s format.

Cezary did a daunting amount of work to gather and analyze the earmark data. When the Federal Highway Administration denied his Freedom of Information Act request, he embarked on a 50-state strategy. He eventually got data from 41 states and the District of Columbia. (USA TODAY added three more states.) Because each state gave the data in a different format — some in PDFs, the bane of every database journalist — Cezary then spent untold hours cleaning and entering the data into a database.

I should also acknowledge the work the Sunlight Foundation, which did a short series of blog entries last year on what they called “Disappearmarks.” Sunlight identified the problem of unspent earmarks, focusing on the $23 billion SAFETEA-LU Act of 2005. But USA TODAY took the story further by looking at 20 years of earmarks.

And, more to the point, Cezary identified a key issue early in his reporting: Because lawmakers often take highway earmarks out of their state’s allotment of federal highway aid, unspent earmarks actually end up costing their states money.

Just as we partnered with the Stabile Center on the front end, USA TODAY partnered with NBC News once we had the story nailed. The NBC Nightly News ran Tom Costello’s report on January 4:

And here I am explaining orphan earmarks for an online video on MSNBC.com (generously edited to make me sound moderately coherent):

(To recap: Cezary did all the hard work. I get to go on national television and take all the credit.)

The story has already inspired editorials across the country. (Tampa Tribune: “Abandon Orphan Earmarks.” Jackson Clarion-Ledger: “Roads: Account for ‘Orphan’ Earmarks.“, Sheboyban Press: “Congress Should at Least Put Expiration Date on Earmarks“). And it’s gotten the attention of U.S. Senator Claire McCaskill, who has called on “orphaned” earmarks to be reunited with their states.

Because of the scope of the issue, we had to narrowly focus our story on a specific problem with earmarks. But we learned some other interesting things along the way, and we’re already planning some follow up stories. Stay tuned.

For this first time in years, my job did not require me to stay up all night after the election crunching precinct results. But it turns out I can’t help myself.

I was curious to look at the Hamilton County Auditor’s race, for a number of reasons:

1. Auditor Dusty Rhodes, a conservative Democrat, has run unopposed for as long as I can remember;
2. Despite Rhodes’ high name identification, former state Rep. Tom Brinkman Jr. would undoubtedly benefit from the looming Republican wave;
3. The auditor’s declining property appraisals might potentially raise interesting issues related to voter discontent with property values and taxes;
4. I had an extra hour over the weekend.

Despite Republican up the ballot, Rhodes won with 55.4 percent of the vote, and the map seems to fall pretty much along traditional party lines:

Over the years, I’ve helped dozens of journalism students with their projects. A few have been extremely thoughtful about the news business, and I’ve even learned some things from them in the process. Heck, I was once a journalism student myself (albeit in the age before e-mail).

But lately, I’ve gotten a number of help-me-with-my-homework e-mails from journalism students that make me worry that they’re just not getting it. Take this one, received from a student at a respected journalism school the day before Election Day with 11 questions on beat reporting due by midnight:

From: (Name redacted) (MU-Student) [******@mail.mizzou.edu]
Sent: Monday, November 01, 2010 9:25 AM
To: Korte, Gregory
Subject: Beat Reporting Interview

Gregory,

My name is (Name redacted), and I’m currently a sophomore Journalism student at the University of Missouri – Columbia. We have begun to study beat reporting, and, as part of a class assignment, I’m required to contact a reporter outside of the city of Columbia and question him or her about this reporting technique. We are working on a deadline, and have to turn in our assignment tomorrow morning at 8 a.m. I realize that it is short notice, but I was wondering if you could answer a few questions about beat reporting? If you could please answer the questions listed below and e-mail me your responses by midnight, I would really appreciate it. Thank you!

Sincerely,

(Name redacted)

Is beat reporting still used in your newsroom?
If not, why is it no longer used?
Have you ever worked as a beat reporter?
If yes, what beat(s)?
What kind of events did you cover?
If you don’t currently cover a certain beat, would you like to?
If so, what would you prefer to focus on?
What do you think are some of the qualities of a good beat reporter?
What do you feel are some of the challenges that come with being a beat reporter?

Did a journalism professor actually assign this? What will this student learn about interviewing — or for that matter, beat reporting — by cut-and-pasting my answers into her paper? Don’t get me wrong: I use e-mail as a reporting tool all the time. I have never, and would never, send a cold-call e-mail to an unknown source with eleven essay questions.

To make it worse (or perhaps better), this same student e-mailed a colleague with the same questions. I’m not sure whether to be offended that she’s wasting our time doing duplicative work, or to admire her canny resourcefulness. (How many of us have sought the same information from multiple sources on deadline?)

For the first time I can remember, I’m not helping a journalism student. And that makes me sad.

Here, all in one place, are links to all the popular precinct maps that ran with various stories in The Cincinnati Enquirer after the November 3, 2009 general election:

• Cincinnati Mayor: Mark Mallory (D) v. Brad Wenstrup (R)
• Cincinnati City Council: First-place finishers by ward
• Cincinnati Board of Education: Vanessa White (C) electoral strength and Charter-Democratic ticket comparison
• Ohio Issue 3: Casino gambling in Hamilton County
• Hamilton County Issue 9: Cincinnati rail transportation charter amendment
• Hamilton County Issue 52: Cincinnati Public Schools renewal levy

Last week, while on an weeklong furlough from my employer, I created an online database of Cincinnati City Council election results by ward. I’ve now launched that project publicly at CincyPolitics.org. The data’s not very deep yet, and the site still has limited functionality, but it’s the first web site I’ve ever created entirely from scratch. I’ll expand it in the future as time allows.

At some point, I’ll write a little more about how I created it. But for now, a little background on why I created it.

As a newspaper reporter whose computer-assisted reporting skills were self-taught, I mostly used database analysis as a tool to research articles. I started with Microsoft Excel and worked my way through Microsoft Access and two different flavors of SQL, SQL Server and MySQL. I dabbled in enough PHP to get up a few WordPress sites, and to create some behind-the-scenes databases for storing and searching public records. Somewhere along the way, I learned some mapping skills, primarily with ESRI’s ArcGIS programs, and became enamored with all kinds of geographic-based data: census counts, property values, fire incidents, subsidized housing units and sex offenders.

But as a former politics reporter, I especially loved voting results. Every Election Day, I go in to work late at night, when they’re done counting the ballots. I get a precinct report, cudgel it into a database, and analyze where the votes came from. I’ll work through the night and have a story online by the time most people wake up the next morning.

The analysis can produce some pretty maps for the newspaper, but I’ve long struggled with how to make them interactive for the web. We have some talented Flash designers in house, but their skills are in the design, not in database work. So the online maps we’ve done have been pretty one-dimensional — and require Flash designers to hand-enter election results.

The solution, I thought, was some kind of dynamic database platform that would have the infrastructure in place and allow me to plug in the numbers on deadline. So far, CincyPolitics.org is a pretty simple solution to that. I’m hoping it can get better. It’s mostly a learning project as I try to teach myself new web development skills.

That’s where computer-assisted reporting has been going for the last several years now — taking those databases we used to crunch behind the scenes and getting it out on a public platform so readers can see it for themselves.

The other day, my colleague Alexander Coolidge found out — belatedly and accidentally — that our series on foreclosures won an honorable mention (and a $1,000 cash prize) from Excellence in Economic Journalism from the Fund for American Studies. (From the newspaper: “Enquirer series on foreclosures honored for economic reporting.”)

We came in a close second to the winner of the $10,000 prize: The New Orleans Times-Picayune, for an exposé of insurance fraud in the wake of Katrina. But what was especially gratifying was that, of all the reporting on the foreclosure crisis last year, The Enquirer’s series was judged as good or better than news organizations 10 times its size.

Here’s the comments from the judges:

Well reported series on the subprime mortgage crisis comprised seven of the nine finalists… But a wonderfully reported enterprise series by Rebecca Mowbray of the New Orleans Times-Picayune on insurance fraud in the wake of Katrina Hurricane took the $10,000 award.

Honorable mention and a $1,000 prize went to Gregory Korte and Alexander Coolidge of the Cincinnati Enquirer.

The IPJ competition for 2007 drew the largest number of entries in its history.

The seven finalists writing on the subprime mess were the Wall Street Journal, the Seattle Times, the Miami Herald, Bloomberg News, the Sacramento Bee, the Cincinnati Enquirer, and the Asbury Park Press. The Detroit News submitted a fine series on the sale of Chrysler Corp. to a private equity group by Mercedes Benz.

The Wall Street Journal threw an army of reporters at the subprime crisis over the course of the year. Bloomberg News produced a number of prophetic pieces labeling certain kinds of subprimre mortgage securities “toxic waste” and predicting the crisis that was about to break.

But The Cincinnati Enquirer and Sacramento Bee series were judged the best of the subprime efforts. The Enquirer’s Gregory Korte and Alexander Coolidge produced more than a dozen pieces showing every aspect of the crisis as it destroyed values, shattered lives, and transformed whole communities in the Cincinnati area. The Sacramento Bee’s eight part series matched them in excellence, but four reporters were involved. So the judges awarded the honorable mention to the Enquirer’s outnumbered two.

The Enquirer’s and Bee’s series almost took top prize. But in the end, the judges felt the work of Mowbray at the Times-Picayune was first among almost equals and most deserved the award.

Judges were Rich Thomas of Newsweek; Mike Ruby, formerly of U.S. News & World Report, Newsweek and the Milwaukee Journal; and John Merline, formerly at USA Today and now AOL.

Congratulations to the Times-Picayune for the well deserved award.

This morning, the Enquirer began promoting a series I reported with my colleague James Pilcher that we’re calling “Gas Price Secrets Revealed.” It’s a look at the vagaries of retail gas pricing, explaining why you’ll pay more on one day of the week and why two stations a mile apart can have such vastly different prices.

We came up with some pretty interesting findings, and we think it’s some of the most detailed reporting on retail gas prices done anywhere.

We’re scheduled to go on WVXU’s Impact Cincinnati program Thursday morning to explain our findings and take questions. The show airs on 91.7 FM at 9:20 a.m.

UPDATE: Here’s the Impact Cincinnati program in .mp3 format.

It’s been 15 years this fall since my byline last appeared in the Cleveland Plain Dealer. This week, it was back.

The Cincinnati Enquirer has joined a consortium of Ohio newspapers pooling resources to fact-check election year political ads. Each paper will take turns reviewing an ad for accuracy, and share the story with the other papers. I’ll be the primary reporter for the Enquirer. Other papers participating are the Plain Dealer, The Columbus Dispatch, The Dayton Daily News and the Canton Repository.

It’s part of a larger cooperative being formed by most of Ohio’s largest daily newspapers to share stories as an alternative to the Associated Press. (See coverage in the Cleveland Plain Dealer and WNYC’s On The Media.)

My first Ad Watch report, on the Obama campaign’s “New Energy” ad, appeared in the Plain Dealer, the Columbus Dispatch and the Cincinnati Enquirer.