We often think of data journalism as a recent invention, but in fact it has been around for centuries. Scott Klein, the assistant managing editor of ProPublica, recently highlighted one fascinating example of “ante-bellum data journalism” that looks a lot like the kind of projects that newsrooms around the world are producing today.
In 1848, Horace Greeley, a newspaper magnate and public figure who had been elected to the House, used open records to investigate whether his colleagues were overbilling the government for the miles they traveled from their home districts to the capital. Greeley compared the mileage reimbursements Congressional members had submitted to the government with a U.S. Post Office book of mail routes, which he reasoned would follow the shortest path from each district to the capitol.
The investigation indicated that several Congressional members were charging the government more than necessary for their travels – including Abraham Lincoln, who was serving his only term in Congress. Greeley calculated that Lincoln had applied for and received around $677 in excess mileage compensation, equivalent to about $18,700 today.
In his article, Greeley blamed not the congressmen but the law, which specified that mileage should be paid by “the usually traveled route,” rather than the postal route. Still, the story spread and quickly became a scandal. Then, as now, the accused Congressmen reacted with vitriol, lambasting Greeley’s work as “absolutely false” and abounding “in gross errors and willfully false statements.”
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