Here’s a great example of the value in data for journalists.

The Reynolds Center for Business Journalism ran a feature on Corey Pein, a journalist for Santa Fe Reporter, who spent two weeks working through raw data to compile a list of the wealthiest residents on his patch.

His resources included property records, nonprofit tax returns, donor lists, private aircraft registrations and court records.

If you could see my desk, you’d weep over the messes of paper I create for those feature-length stories.

His final story won him first place in the AltWeekly Awards for Innovation/Format Buster.

The publisher has used public database site, Socrata, to create five searchable online databases from the information Pein’s work uncovered.