I had the privilege of speaking on a panel with Sarah Cohen and Steve Doig last week in Baltimore about the future of computer-assisted reporting. Whoever thought I even belonged in the same room as those two gave me way more credit than I deserved.

But in preparing for that panel, I got to thinking: What skills and software tools are we going to be using in 10 years? What skills should we start learning now if we want to be prepared for the future? Or better yet: What types of problems in newsgathering and investigations could technology best help solve?

The federal government launched Data.gov a little less than a month ago with raw databases, data extraction tools and widgets and pledged to bring "unprecedented access to government information." The White House said the site would allow "unfiltered access to government data streams in machine-readable formats."

Early this past fall, our group of journalists and developers at The New York Times began to assemble the data necessary to produce our election guide, which would not only focus on the presidential race but also include races for the U.S. House and Senate.

Last month, I provided some tips for making the switch to Microsoft Excel 2007 spreadsheet. Here are some things you need to know about Access 2007, the updated version of Microsoft’s desktop database manager.
Just like Excel 2007, Access uses Microsoft’s new Tab, Ribbon and Button setup to organize functions that had been stored under menus. (Click images to enlarge for a better detail view.)

In most cases, when you want to match data from one table in a database to another, a common approach is to use a JOIN clause in your query.

For example, if you had a list of candidates in one table, and a list of donations made to candidates (with one field having a candidate ID in it), you'd probably either use JOIN clause or a WHERE clause to match them together:

(pseudo-code)

SELECT * FROM candidates, donations where candidates.candidate_id = donations.candidate_id;


Now that it’s high political season, it’s a perfect time to prepare for reporting on the election. If you take a few steps to get ready, you’ll be able to cut through the spin on election night and the days after and show how the candidates fared in your area. So, here are some tips for laying the foundation now: