Rural Computer-Assisted Reporting

Small Newsrooms, Big Stories

This fund is for journalists who cover a lot of territory with limited resources. It has one main purpose: To help unearth important stories that otherwise won’t get told. R-CAR fellows spend five days learning how to build and query databases at Investigative Reporters & Editors Inc. in Columbia, Mo. They emerge with the tools to convert spreadsheets into sources. Fellows are chosen based on their journalistic ability, motivation, and ideas to pursue stories of consequence for their communities. (more…)

Jamie Self

A fellowship from the Fund for Rural Computer-Assisted Reporting allowed me to spend six days in Aug...

Hillary Borrud

When I received a Rural Computer Assisted Reporting fellowship, I was the city hall reporter for The...

Rajah Maples

The R-CAR fellowship for the Investigative Reporters and Editors boot camp helped shape me into a mo...

Kate Martin

Kate Martin (right) of the Skagit Valley Herald, in Mt. Vernon, Wash., was the inaugural recipient of the Fund for Rural Computer Assisted Reporting fellowship. She attended the Investigative Reporters and Editors' six-day boot camp in March of 2011. Below is ...

Rural Computer-Assisted Reporting workshop conveys critical skills; fellowship available to full-scale CAR Boot Camp

Twelve journalists from five states and Washington, D.C., learned computer-assisted reporting or honed their basic CAR skills at a workshop at the University of Kentucky, sponsored by the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues and Investigative Re...

R-CAR: The Fund for Rural Computer-Assisted Reporting

By DANIEL GILBERT of The Wall Street Journal: The idea for this fund began with an obscure government board and $23 million that had largely escaped scrutiny for 20 years. Lax oversight by understaffed agencies is not peculiar to any state or communit...