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Journalist's Toolbox Update
UPDATED: July 01, 2008  Weekly E-Newsletter: Sign up for our weekly newsletter and get updates on new sites and other resources. Click here to send us an update or comment on the site! FEATURED SITES National Criminal Justice Reference Service SEDAR Database: Good public records search tool. LiveNewsCameras.com: Newly redesigned, this site offers live streaming video channels from network affiliates around the world, as well as Sky News and the Pentagon Channel. Includes Twitter feed. Journerdism.com: News and resources about the online news industry. Site is run by Will Sullivan, the award-winning Interactive Director of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Omgili: Searches more than 100,000 message boards and forums.
Wildfires: Use tools in the Public Safety section for backgrounding stories on the California and Arizona wildfires. You'll need to scroll down the page to find the section. Food Safety: For anyone writing about the Nebraska Beef recall, you'll find helpful resources in the Public Safety Issues, Agriculture and Food and Cooking sections. July 4: Find statistics and facts about July 4 in the Holidays section. Summer Olympics: The Toolbox's Olympics section provides links to history, records, events, background on host city, Olympic organizations, news coverage and issues such as human rights and air pollution at the Games. Among the sites: AroundtheRings.com, which covers the business of the Olympics. It includes, archives, newsletter and a "useful links" section. Another helpful site is GamesBids.com, which covers cities' bids for upcoming Summer and Winter Olympics. We'll be adding content to the Olympics section in the next few months. Elections: Dozens of campaign coverage resources are available in the Election 2008 section. One example is Electoral-Vote.com, which tracks state polls and provides a graphic summary of the electoral vote outlook. Another helpful site is Everyzing, a search tool finds campaign-related audio and video. And you can use FedSpending.org to track which companies receive federal grants and contracts. The site lets you sort by state, district, agency, etc. More Election Resources: HuffingtonPost.com: Fundrace has an interactive map and database that helps you track presidential contributions by address, zip code, party, candidate, etc. Find more campaign fundraising links in the Toolbox's Investigative section. Iraq: The American Copy Editors Society site has background and an FAQ on military, weapons, media outlets and more. It's great for quick fact-checking. PBS Frontline has a site on Private Companies That Make America's War in Iraq Run. Also find several new resources in the Iraq and Military sections. Flooding: In addition to the severe weather resources, you also can find flooding resources in the Public Safety section. The USGS has a fact sheet on flooding and HowStuffWorks offers a helpful section explaining the basics of floods and levees. The MSNBC Flood Map uses text and video icons to locate stories along an online map. Just click on the map and you get stories and information from that area's flooding issues. Add Flooding Resources: IRE and NICAR have compiled flooding resources, including tipsheets, stories and databases on flooding. They recently updated their National Bridge Inventory Database, which lists structural evaluations and codes for all bridges in the U.S. The data includes fields that indicate the year the bridge was built, how many lanes and several key fields that can be used for an overall indication of a bridge's quality. There is also a field that indicates the feature intersected, for example if the bridge goes over a body of water or if it intersects with another highway or roadway. Severe Weather Resources: The Toolbox's Weather section features several online storm trackers and background on severe weather trends and history. One helpful site is GuiWeather, which uses Google Earth to map and track storm warnings. Also helpful is the National Weather Service: National Tornado Fatality Map, which allows you to click on states/cities where tornado deaths occurred. Gas and Food Prices: The Council for Biotechnology Information developed a helpful site, Food and Fuel: Myths and Facts. The site shares science-based information about the benefits and safety of agricultural and food biotechnology to sustainable development. FACSNET: Pain at the Pump is a presentation and resources on the rising price of fuel from Robert Kaufman of Boston University. The Grocery Game.com tracks prices of more than 10,000 grocery items. It's a great site for cost comparison studies over time. Find more helpful resources in the Business and Agriculture sections. More resources on gas prices: Business section. Stock Markets: Use tools in the Business Resources section to track the daily changes in the markets. New Media: SensibleTalk.com is a new site from Robert Niles, formerly of the USC-Annenberg's Online Journalism Review. He writes ifor a community forum "devoted to media, business, arts and technology criticism" and invites readers to share their observations in a public journal. Writing With Numbers: SensibleUnits.com converts measurements, distances, weights, etc. into objects to which a reader can relate. For example, the site helps you determine that four acres equals about three football fields or 13 Olympic-sized swimming pools. It's very handy for developing graphics and writing about sizes of buildings and lots. Weird Converter is great for analyzing numbers and coming up with odd facts and figures for stories. It's great for comparing sizes, weights and gives the reader some perspective. Find more resources in the Toolbox's Writing With Numbers section. Daily News Sites: EveryBlock.com, available in Chicago, San Francisco and New York, helps you browse news by zip code or neighborhood. You can enter an address and see nearby crimes, restaurant inspections, media coverage, etc. You also can get a citywide overview of news by category, then click on specific topics to find what you're looking for. Find more sites like this in the Daily News Sites and Blog sections. General Research: The New York Times has launched TimesMachine, which gives browsable access to the Times from 1851 to 1922. It's important to note that it is only available to home delivery subscribers. Also: The British Library owns the world's largest collection of research materials. You can search 20,000 journals for free and order full text for a small fee. Find more sites in the General Research section. Military: Ancestry.com: Military Records offers thousands of records, old newsreels, etc. You can search by war, era or follow a timeline of events to find the information. Journalism Blogs: Find links to journalism and industry news blogs on this new page. Related Resources: Search Engines-Blog Search Tools and News Industry. Legal Resources: The Knight Center for Specialized Journalism developed a beat guide for courts and law coverage on its website. Simply go to the website and page click on "Learn More" on the "New Resource" box. The International Center for Not-For-Profit Law Directory allows you to search legal documents, court cases, reports, and other civil society resources from countries around the world. ICNL's Online Library currently contains 2,300 resources from 144 countries in 37 languages. 9/11 Terrorist Attacks: Research and background stories in the Toolbox's archived 9/11 Terrorist Attacks section. It includes pages on Osama Bin Laden, Terrorism and the Taliban, Airline Safety, Dealing with the Trauma, other 9/11 Anniversary Archives and media coverage. Also, use the databases in the Expert Sources section for additional background. Covering People With Disabilities: You'll find hundreds of resources on the People with Disabilities page. Free Speech/First Amendment: Check out the 2005 State of the First Amendment Survey. We've added new resources to the Free Speech/First Amendment page. Jobs: The Toolbox's Jobs section features dozens of journalism job databases and search resources. They're organized by news, sports, photography, PR, etc. Just for Fun: Check out the Cool Sites page for funny, offbeat web tools. The Strange News archive shows that fact truly is stranger than fiction. Teaching Tools: Many of you who use this site train your newsrooms and classrooms how to do online research: College Media, High School Journalism, Print Design, Broadcasting, Ethics, Writing, Reporting Techniques, Writing with Numbers, Photojournalism and Copy Editing. Reporting Tools: Reporting Techniques, Phone/E-Mail/Maps Directories, Search Engines, Expert Sources, Investigative, Form 990s, Public Records, Ethics, Check Domain Names, General Research and Writing With Numbers. Editing and Fact-Checking Resources: The American Copy Editing Society has assembled a collection of 49 online quizzes about everything from AP Style and usage to Iraq and the Middle East. Related Resources: Copy Editing, General Research, History, Domain Sites and Writing With Numbers. Writing with Statistics: Test your skills with IRE's interactive math quiz. After you've taken the test, click on the link at the bottom of the page to find out how to arrive at the correct answers. You'll find more resources like this one on the Writing with Numbers page. Related Resources: Spreadsheets, Business, Finance and Federal Government Census Data. Student Resources: College and high school students will find many helpful Toolbox resources for researching papers, reporting and more: Reporting Techniques, Public Records, History, Ethics and Copy Editing. |
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