By Daniel Gilbert

Bristol (Va.) Herald Courier

On Sunday, our newspaper launched an eight-day investigative series on mineral rights that draws extensively on techniques I learned at IRE’s August boot camp on computer-assisted reporting. The stories focus on landowners forced by the state of Virginia to lease their mineral rights to private companies. The companies are required to pay royalties into a state-run escrow fund, pending a determination of who owns the gas. The royalties have accumulated for almost 20 years without any meaningful oversight, and the fund now contains more than $24 million.

It turns out that the escrow fund should contain much more. Hundreds of individual accounts in escrow aren’t receiving deposits during months that the wells are producing gas, which points to a host of problems including companies that have failed to file the required paperwork for royalties to be escrowed, years after their wells began producing. After a lot of back-and-forth, the state agency tasked with monitoring the escrow fund has acknowledged the discrepancies and vowed to fix the problems. One major corporation has issued a mea culpa; none of the companies or the state have disputed my analysis, which I provided to them for review.

Months ago, I could have written a story that pointed out the lack of oversight in place, and the very limp incentives the state gave companies to follow the law. With the basic CAR techniques I learned, I wrote a story that illustrates specific ways in which energy corporations have failed to follow the law, and the state agency regulating them has failed to make them comply. As a Web component, our staff created a searchable database of escrow statements, which will enable people in the region, throughout the state and across the country to look up what they have a claim to in escrow.

You can follow the stories here.

Editor’s note: Brandon Stahl of the Duluth News-Tribune attended an IRE Regional Boot Camp at the University of Minnesota Oct. 6-10, 2008. He recently published his first CAR-driven story, which was about home assessments. Read below to find out how he got the story. (IRE and the City University of New York will be hosting a Regional Boot Camp in New York June 22-26. For more information and to register go here.)

A little bit of background: my editors had long wanted a story on the topic of home assessments as it’s a commonly held perception in the city that the assessor’s office overvalues homes. Prior to the CAR training, no one here really knew how to address the issue other than report “assessor’s office says that’s not true. So there. Now go away.”

After the CAR training, where we learned that it’s OK to steal ideas whenever possible, I noticed that CAR trainer MaryJo Webster had done a similar story for the Pioneer Press. After I told her about my desire to steal, she told me she got the data from the state department of revenue, which was able to send me data specific to our paper’s county (and thankfully, free of charge).

Crunching the numbers actually became easy after awhile — it was essentially just finding the median home sale and estimates for whatever dataset I was looking for (the difficult part was narrowing in on the various cities and towns in the county). It was also easy because CAR instructor Jaimi Dowdell has been forced to serve as my security blanket and answered just about every question I’ve asked, including “can the data tell me where I put my car keys?” (The answer: no). The hard part was doing the actual reporting, which involved typing in a home sale code into the assessor’s Web site to determine who bought/sold a home, and then getting people to talk to me. Strangely, people whose homes were way undervalued by the city rarely called me back. It was also difficult because the data didn’t really show a pattern of government mismanagement. It’s hard to report a story that essentially says “save for a few glitches, local government basically doing its job.”

Hopefully next time I do a CAR story that uncovers corruption, or at least tells me where my keys are. But this felt like a good start.

-Brandon Stahl, Duluth News-Tribune

Check out IRE’s training calendar often to see if we’re coming to your area. If you’d like to bring a boot camp to your region, contact Jaimi Dowdell, jaimi@ire.org.

Editor’s note: Keegan Kyle attended an IRE Regional Boot Camp at the University of Minnesota Oct. 6-10, 2008. Here’s his story of how the training bolstered his job prospects. (IRE and CUNY will be hosting a Regional Boot Camp in New York June 22-26. For more information and to register go here.)

The first time I ever stayed in an international hostel, I was visiting Minneapolis to attend a week-long IRE Boot Camp.

I was a recent college graduate without a job, so my personal finances were tight. I booked a bed in the hostel’s community room for $28 per night, and I bought groceries at a corner market. The hostel had free Internet access.

I spent the days learning how to use computer databases in my reporting, and I spent the nights chatting with traveling foreigners.

The worst part? The community dormitory sounded like a cave full of hibernating grizzly bears with severe respiratory problems. I grabbed my iPod, listened to Enya for awhile and managed to sleep well each night.

I didn’t mind dealing with the hostel or the snoring guests because I knew that strange week in October would pay off in the end. For young journalists who are trying to find a path to the professional world, computer-assisted reporting can be an eye-catching bullet point for the resume and a great skill to talk about in job interviews.

The skills I learned at the Boot Camp helped me land a computer-assisted reporting internship at the Orange County Register and put me ahead of the competition for a reporting job at the Green Bay Press-Gazette. I am now a full-time public safety reporter, and I’m working on data-driven stories every week.

The IRE training directors helped me learn some new tricks for data analysis, but more than anything, I think the Boot Camp renewed my enthusiasm for reporting. I started working on more advanced projects and learning new skills like mapping.

I still have a lot to learn about computer-assisted reporting, but the Boot Camp definitely steered me in the right direction. I never regret paying my own way to attend the training sessions.

I hopefully will never have to stay in a hostel again, but I guess it wasn’t that terrible of an experience. I’ve already started looking into paying my own way for the IRE conference in Baltimore this June. As luck would have it, there happens to be a hostel less than two miles away.

— Keegan Kyle, reporter, Green Bay Press-Gazette

Check out IRE’s training calendar often to see if we’re coming to your area. If you’d like to bring a boot camp to your region, contact Jaimi Dowdell, jaimi@ire.org.