At The Roanoke Times, Matt Chittum is building a database and accompanying map to help users spot bears, since black bear sightings are frequent in Virginia.

This bear map is only one of many databases to be compiled in the paper’s website DataSphere. The DataSphere collects in one place the multitude of newspaper databases that could be helpful to the local audience (also see the DataUniverse put up by the Asbury Park Press).

“I didn't want us to forever shy from running them (databases) because we had one really bad experience. I wanted to show they could be used for the good -- for good journalism -- if you carefully weighed the value of the information you were presenting," said Roanoke Times editor Carole Tarrant.

And indeed newspapers can create a quality editorial product through databases. Chittum filed another database that enables users to follow the 21-year career of Virginia Tech football coach Frank Beamer. The New York Times set up a graph and map of presidential campaign visits.

Perhaps the best proof of the importance of the data delivery editor, a position unheard of before, is his hire at the Roanoke Times. “The data delivery editor wasn't an additional position -- we had to make a choice to not do something else," Tarrant said, a hard choice to make in a context of shrinking newsrooms.

Source: Poynter Institute