Computer-Assisted Research and Reporting in St. Louis, originally uploaded by Rob Bluey.

Several months ago my colleague Bridgett Wagner put me in touch with Jason Hannasch of the Show-Me Institute. The free-market think tank in Missouri wanted to bring the Heritage Foundation’s Computer-Assisted Research and Reporting boot camp to Kansas City and St. Louis as part of a joint undertaking with the Missouri Broadcasters Association. It was a great idea, and one that we turned into reality this weekend with classes in Friday and Saturday.

I returned home from Missouri last night very pleased with results. We trained 16 television and radio journalists (eight in each city), imparting on them the basics of using Microsoft Excel, how find stories using statistics, where to find information on the Internet and what to do with the data on the Web. (More photos on Flickr.)

The three teachers who made it all happen were Mark Tapscott of the Washington Examiner, Bill Beach of the Heritage Foundation and Greg Elin of the Sunlight Foundation. Don Hicks of the Missouri Broadcasters Association and Eric Dixon and David Stokes of the Show-Me Institute were also on hand both days.

For journalists who aren’t able to travel to Washington to attend our boot camp at the National Press Club, the classes in Missouri were a perfect opportunity to learn something new in their own backyard. I hope we’re able to make similar trips in the future. Not only does it give us an opportunity to interact with new and different people, but it also gives journalists a day’s worth of free training they’re not getting anywhere else.