More resources from Bedford/St. Martin's

Download the Order Form (Adobe Acrobat format)

Chapter Highlights and Exercises
Chapter 1 High-Tech Journalism: What Computer-Assisted Reporting Is and Why Journalists Use It
Chapter 2 Online Resources: Researching and Finding Data on the Internet
Chapter 3 Spreadsheets, Part 1: Basic Math for Journalists
Chapter 4 Spreadsheets, Part 2: More Math That Matters
Chapter 5 Database Managers, Part 1: Searching and Summarizing
Chapter 6 Database Managers, Part 2: Matchmaking and Advanced Queries
Chapter 7 Getting Data Not on the Internet: How to Find and Negotiate for Data
Chapter 8 Building Your Own Database: How to Develop Exclusive Sources
Chapter 9 Fact Checking the Database: How to Clean Dirty Data
Chapter 10 Doing the Computer-Assisted Reporting Story: How to Report and Write with Data

Data downloading tips: Practice data sets must be downloaded and saved to your computer before use. (If you just double-click to open the link, the file will look like garbled characters.) PC users can right-click on the link and choose "Save" or "Save link as" then select a file location and the correct file format (.mdb files are Access files, .xls for Excel). Next, open Excel or Access, depending on which type of file you're using. Under the File menu, select 'Open' and choose the file you just saved.

Note on Access files: Access practice files (.mdb) are in Access 97 format. If you have a newer version, Access may treat the downloaded file as "read only" when you open it. Go to the Tools menu, select Database Utilities-->Convert Database to save a usable copy of the data.

Delimited text files (.CVS) must be saved to your computer before they can be imported to Excel, etc., as described in the Ch. 7 "Importing" section.

If you have questions or suggestions, please e-mail resctr@ire.org.

Return to main CAR book page