A Tech Lover Owns Up, Signs Off Aug 4, 2008, 14 :00 UTC (2 Talkback[s]) (4205 reads) (Other stories by Mike Himowitz)
"There wasn't much commercial software in those days -- or not that I could afford -- so I rolled my own. When somebody actually wrote a spreadsheet for that little computer, I thought I was in heaven -- and used it to do a series on defense spending.
"Today this is known as "computer assisted reporting," a recognized specialty that gives reporters and editors the power to sort through huge volumes of public data and write stories that might have taken months or years in the days before PCs -- if they were possible to do at all. Like me, most of the people who do this are not math jocks or geeks -- just reporters who want answers to questions and use computers as a tool."
