My next Data Delver: By day, he’s an investigative reporter. By night, he’s Superman!  (Okay, he actually builds database applications with co-conspirator Matt Waite.  But that’s almost the same, right?)

The CAR world, as I see it, has two different paths you can go down: continue to use data for reporting stories, or apply those skills to web development and presenting data. The latter splits into front-end and back-end work as well.

If you’re indecisive like me, the best case scenario is to be able to use CAR for both reporting and building data apps, or at least, exercise careful control over where you direct your skills in different situations. That requires you be an excellent reporter and developer — it’s a tall order.  But one that California Watch’s Chase Davis meets with passion and skill.




This profile of Davis is a part of my continuing series I’m calling “Data Delvers,” where I pass on summaries, quotes and audio clips from conversations with journalists using technology to find, analyze and convey data-driven stories and/or projects to the modern audience.

From AOL games to data journalism

While many CAR lovers come to the field via journalism, and then teach themselves the coding part, Davis was a coder before he knew he wanted to be a reporter.  He was adding extra levels and characters to AOL games with QBasic while he was in junior high.  Then, he fell into reporting in college and discovered he could combine the two to pursue his passion of investigative reporting.  “It offers one of the last new frontiers or opportunities, I think, to find stories that absolutely no one is finding, whether that be reporters, or regulators, or anybody else,” said Davis.

Davis has worked at a variety of news organizations from Boston to Houston, sometimes working as a reporter, sometimes as a CAR specialist, sometimes as a developer, but most often employing many of those skills at once.

Passionately pursuing investigative reporting

Davis uses his technical skills to find stories as an investigative reporter at California Watch.  He shares the Money and Politics beat with Lance Williams, who broke the Barry Bonds steroid story, has more of a historical perspective, said Davis, so together their strengths play off of each other. Davis meets sources in the field and does traditional reporting, but is also able to bring together database applications when needed for packages.

Navigating a spreadsheet should be a skill most reporters have under their belt, Davis said.  But there’s still a place for a specialist working with skills that are “a little bit trickier.”  For example, at California Watch, they are starting to use a technique called “machine learning,” which Davis said means “writing a program that can read documents, and find patterns in those documents that people wouldn’t otherwise see.”

The freedom to experiment

The openness to new ideas for presentation and reporting at California Watch is one of Davis’ favorite parts of his relatively new job. “There’s really no limit, no one’s putting handcuffs on us saying, ‘This is how it’s always been done,’ or any other barriers to any new idea that we have.  So we are pretty much free to do whatever we think could be cool, which is nice.”

That experimentation has included the crowdsourcing of a database.  And there’s more to come.  “We have really big plans for some things down the line that are going to be really exciting, and we’ll be pushing the boundaries of where some of this can go,” said Davis.

Users care about interacting with data

Davis said he’s found people to be extremely interested in this type of work. That’s partially because the stories are so new,and partially because of voyeuristic curiosity.  But, he thinks what people really like are data-driven applications that people can truly engage with.  “They like being able to go in and not just look up what their neighbor is making, but also being able to understand better context locally on any given issue that they’re interested in, by virtue of the database,” said Davis.

Take control of your skills

Davis said having CAR skills of any sort, but especially you combine it with programming, is an extremely powerful and in-demand combination.  He gets calls every few weeks from editors and managers looking to fill CAR-related positions.

He said starting one’s career at a smaller newspaper, and trying to integrate CAR, can be difficult, and has seen that frustration play out among his colleagues when they don’t have ample software, time or support.

But there are many opportunities where people do understand the skill set, and if you have the skills, then it’s up to you how you best want to use them.

“I think the trick is to get to know the people in the community,” said Davis.  “There are so few people who know how to do this stuff, and so many openings, and so much demand, that this is really the one position in journalism, at least that I can think of right now, where they can’t fill the jobs fast enough.”

Extended transcript

Read on to learn about a recent California Watch experiment tapping into community involvement, and more of Davis’ thoughts on the future of CAR.




What is it you do at California Watch?

We are a team of six reporters,three editors, and two multimedia producers, we’re going to hire a couple more reporters, I think, in the next few months. We’re split into two groups. We have the main office down in Berkeley, and I’m in the bureau up here in Sacramento. I cover money and politics issues, along with Lance Williams who came from the San Francisco Chronicle. He is the guy who broke the Barry Bonds steroid story, and he has been doing California politics coverage longer than I’ve been alive. He also has more of a historical perspective, and I have more of the technical skills, so we’re able to play off of each other in that regard.

On my typical day, I go into the office and I report, for the most part. My job is to be an investigative reporter here more so than a developer or CAR person. We have a guy on staff who is amazing with that kind of stuff, his name is Agustin Armendariz. He comes from the San Diego Union Tribune, and used to work for the Center for Public Integrity for a long time. He does sort of the day-to-day heavy lifting on data stuff. I just got back half an hour ago from a lunch with a source, just doing what the standard investigative reporter does. I try to incorporate data analysis into the stories I’m working on. I’ve got something coming out in a couple of weeks that’ll have some interactive databases and applications going with it. We had a story that I did a couple of weeks ago that had the same, and so we sort of try to incorporate it.




What are some of the differences between the work you are doing at California Watch, and what you did in Des Moines?

Des Moines, actually not much. I was also a reporter there for the most part, I was also the CAR specialist there, I suppose. The charge there was more writing stories than it was doing analysis work for others. The difference here, I suppose, other than the structure of the organization, is that I’m on the beat of money and politics now, whereas in Des Moines I was just on the investigative desk, I worked on environment stuff, and some other things.




Can you take me through your career and some of the other positions you’ve had, and tell me how you got started?

I went to Mizzou, and did internships every summer that I was there, it ended up being six internships, and one was in the fall or the winter. I started off at a small weekly in Minneapolis, then I went to Iowa, then to Omaha, St. Pete briefly for a little special thing we worked out over winter break, then to Milwaukee, and then Boston. About halfway through that time I started working at NICAR in the database library, just kind of on a lark, I didn’t know where that would actually take me. I knew how to program in a handful of languages, and I had some experience with databases, and so they let me come on there, first as a volunteer, and then as a paid staff member. So I worked with them for a couple years, sort of doing data analysis and cleanup.  And then, the Boston thing was an extended internship where I actually went to Boston for about five months doing night cops reporting for the most part. But then after that, I stayed on remotely for another six months or so, just sort of helping out with the various stories with the Romney campaign, when he was gearing up for his presidential run, doing sort of data analysis, and things like that, for the political reporters. I got hired in Houston, worked at the Chronicle for a couple of years, on their investigative desk as their CAR specialist, and then from Houston, I went to Des Moines for what ended up being a very short amount of time – about nine months—before this offer came up, and now I’m here.




What drew you to CAR in the first place?

I come to CAR from a weird background in that I knew how to do computer programming and all that be