ABSTRACT
This chapter explains large databases and many categories of information that a spreadsheet could handle but was simpler to analyze with the database manager Microsoft Access—and could have been done in DB Browser SQLite—because it is easier to select the columns reporter or journalism student want to work with and to quickly make subsets of information to analyze. Many journalists have initially used a database manager to analyze campaign finance records. These records are public and they cross over many topics because campaign finance records are a way of tracking access and influence of contributors on issues such as education, health, business and environment. Database managers are meant to be used by more than one person, so the software makes it difficult to change column names or the layout of the data. The way the reporter or journalism student does analysis of a database is to “build” a query.
