by Shannon Lee
Reporters of a Washington Post article about frequent power outages in the Washington, D.C. area used computer-assisted reporting to help tell the story.
The reporters would have had to review monthly reports from Pepco, the districts utility provider. They needed to examine how often Pepco customers experienced power outages and when, where and for how long the outages occured. They also would have needed to compare those records with past reports from the company and with reports from other service providers in nearby cities.
The article includes an interactive map to illustrate where and for how long the district residents experienced power outages in 2010. It also shows a line graph that compares the average number of power outages in the area to other big cities.
To create the map and the graph, reporters would have needed to know how to use mapping software and spreadsheet programs.
