Jul 17

Follow breaking news on Ban.jo

A lot of the buzz at IRE was about the app ban.jo, which is a two-year old social media platform that combines Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and Pinterest all together for quick review. It’s searchable and the best part — can be filtered by location.

logo_banjo_75“With ban.jo you can see what is happening in real time around the world or around the corner, ” explained Jennifer Peck, a Ban.jo employee who spoke at the IRE conference in June.

She explained that at the time of the Boston bombing, banjo users were able to filter out thousands of tweets, posts and pictures and find just the messages and photos from the finish line. And you don’t have to go to each of the four platforms as ban.jo brings them all together.

Obviously, ban.jo only picks up the location from those people who have their geolocation turned on, but Peck said that during Hurricane Sandy thousands of people posted details and photos from specific location.

Ban.jo could be very helpful to reporters:

  • In breaking news situations to get information and photos when you don’t have reporters yet at the scene. See a post by reporter Andy Settler of “The Reporter,”(Penn.) explaining how he got quick, helpful information from ban.jo when the police scanner reported a bomb at the local mall
  • When a national story breaks,  such as the recent plane crash in San Francisco, ban.jo staff will post a “tile”, folder, with content from the scene, updated in real time
  • To gauge the fan sentiment at sports events and to see their photos.

Check back for posts later this week on how to connect with sources on ban.jo and cautions about making sure you check out the information you read there to make sure it’s valid.

If you’ve used ban.jo for reporting, I’d love to hear how it worked, below.

 

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Jul 08

Five Resources to Help You Cover Ramadan

crescent-200Some six to seven million Muslims live in the U.S. [according to CAIR] and many will observe the holy month of Ramadan, starting Tuesday.   The observance commemorates the month in which  Muhammad began to receive his revelations. It’s a holy season marked by personal introspection, good deeds for others and fasting during daylight hours.

Here are five resources to help you understand the observance and find story ideas:

1. You can find an excellent primer on how to cover Islam at ReligionLink, affiilated with Religion Newswriters Association. This is a must-read and includes sources, basic tenets of the faith, and links to Muslim organizations.

2. BeliefNet‘s “What is Ramadan” is a helpful article to understand the basics of the observance.

3. To find out how Ramadan is calculated, based on the new moon,  check out the  Fiqh Council website. It explains why the observance in the U.S. may be a day earlier than that in Saudi Arabia and other countries.

4. For social justice issues for Muslims, see the Council on American-Islamic Relations, CAIR.

5. Andmake sure you don’t make common mistakes that offend Muslims, by reading these helpful tips from ReligionLink,  “Things Journalists Should Be Aware Of.”

Because Ramadan now falls in the hottest part of the year in many U.S. states, one story lead is to brainstorm how the heat affects Muslim athletes or family summer l activities.

 

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Jul 02

Twitter lists help with sourcing and story ideas

twitter_logoI’m enamored with Twitter lists. I have a half dozen and I often make them when teaching an Internet research seminar.

What’s so great about them?

  • you can combine tweets on a topic or beat in one place
  • the tweets are easy to read and are all topical
  • by reading them you will find stories or story leads
  • you can find new sources through retweets  or mentions of others by those already on your list.

Having a twitter list gives you at-a-glance look at tweets from a group of people you’ve elected to follow. For example, this week I’m showing arts journalists how to research arts in a community so I formed a twitter list of the key arts institutions, organizations and venues in one sample town, Grand Rapids, Mich.

Here are three steps to get started.

First, on twitter, create a list by either a) clicking on lists at left or b) clicking on the gear at the upper right and then on “lists” a list by going to the gear icon

twitter_list_ss

Second, type in the list name and description; decide whether to make it public or private.

Third ,once you know a person or organization you want on that list, go to his/her/its twitter page and click on the profile. Look at the right for the silhouette of a person’s head and click the arrow next to it.  Choose “add ” and click the appropriate list.

twitter_list_add_ss

To find this list to read on the web go to your twitter account and click on lists (at left) and then the list name. Or use the URL format:  twitter.com/profilename/listname as in twitter.com/readyreporter/AJ-GrandRapids

Twitter offers a good FAQ on lists, that will answer many of your further questions.

I’d love to hear how you use twitter lists in your reporting, and am hoping to feature some reporters here on the blog.

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Jun 23

5 More Tips from #IRE13 Conference

My mind is swimming with all I have learned at IRE. And I have a lot of apps, programs, websites to check out and tell you more about over the coming months.  Here are some of the top quick points from what I’ve heard:

1. Track key words in legislation at your state house and get alerts for those keywords via openstates.org

2. Sunlight Foundation, which runs #1 above, also has many websites to help you follow politics, track influencers of politics and even find deleted tweets from pols. For a list of all of them check out the Tools tab.

3. Three ways to verify a photo — use the camera icon at Google images and drag the photo in to see where it appears online; do the same on tineye.com or click on the photo settings and get the EXIF data which has latitude and longitude which you can put in Google maps.

4. New to an area and want some quick demographics to help you understand that neighborhood or city?  Download the sitegeist app.

5. You could spend days looking at all the business and economic data provided by the St. Louis Federal Reserve.  It’s called FRED.

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Jun 21

5 Tips from Day 1 of #IRE13

IRE logoMore than 1200 journalists are in San Antonio for the annual conference of Investigative Reporters and Editors. If you’ve never been, put it on your list for June 2014 because you’ll learn a lot from reporters ready to share their inside secrets and best tips.

Here are five practical tips to help you be a better reporter:

1. Ryann Grochowski, from Investigative Newsource says four databases that every newsroom should have are:

  • Voter registration files.  This helps in backgrounding people and confirming addresses.  Some states require phone numbers so it can be a great way of tracking down people, as well.
  • Campaign finance data as a look up, to confirm addresses and see relationships
  • Dog license database.  People who don’t give out their address or phone number elsewhere don’t want to find Fido when she runs away, so they keep their information current.
  • Property tax records. Many counties put them online for searching.

2. Margot Williams of NPR says that you can track who in your area is applying for H1B visas and green cards by downloading the U.S. Department of Labor Emplyment an Training Adinistration. You won’t get names but you will get the company/individual names, the job titles and salaries.

3. To be a better searcher on Twitter filter for location. For example: Near:Detroit #arts within:10mi

4. ProPublica has cleaned up data and organized it to make it easy for you to use in stories for your local area.  Check out what it has for nursing home problems, doctors receiving payments from pharmaceuticals,  recipients of stimulus money and more.

5. Banjo is the “fastest way to get eyes on the ground” for breaking news, says Jennifer Peck of Banjo. It compiles postings/photos/info from Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest and Foursquare that has a location to it. More on that in another post.

 

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May 15

Ready Reporter’s Been Snoozing!

Snooze_clipartSorry for the lack of posts — the professor behind Ready Reporter is teaching an intensive summer school course which is keeping her pretty busy.

But check back and you’ll see more here soon…

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May 02

Five Best Websites for Agriculture Stats and Reports

Green Snow PeasSpring has finally come to Central New York. One of my friends said driving around this week was like living in time lapse, with one day first bare tree limbs, the next a green haze on the branches, and then little buds.

And that reminded me that many reporters will be doing agriculture stories. So here are five sites to help you beef up your reporting with statistics or reports:

Can’t wait for snap peas and  fresh peaches!

 

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Apr 18

Where to Find Good Sources About Chemicals

Ricin makes news on Wednesday, and now anhydrous ammonia on Thursday. Here are tips on how to search quicker,  better and smarter to get quick facts about those chemicals.

1. Don’t just plug terms into a search engine

That generally doesn’t give you the best sources. Often Wikipedia comes up high in the search results.  It’s good for some things, but not reputable on all topics. Other links that float to the top are likely for other news organizations. You want an original source.

2. Search a keyword or phrase at a site you know is reputable 

You might think that the Centers for Disease Control deal with health hazards and the EPA deals with environmental concerns. So go search tkeywords at those sites only. You can filter for just certain sites, rather than search the whole ‘net. Here’s the formula:  keyword site:domain. 

Example: ricin site:cdc.gov   or “anhydrous ammonia” site:cdc.gov

The first search nets this helpful page all about ricin.

3. Search the keywords at a government site

If you’re not sure whether EPA or which agency would provide information on   anhydrous amonia, but you want a government site, try this search: “anhydrous ammonia” site:gov

With that you’d get these top hits from Google:

With the same search in Bing! you find:

Bing! also gives you ideas of other common searches on the topic which provide you with another set of quality sites:

ss_bing_search_ammonia

 

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Apr 11

Open States Unlocks State Legislative Information

Available for all 50 States, plus DC and Puerto Rico

openstates_logo

New to a state and want to find out the government players? Need to track legislation at the statehouse? Want to be notified when bills pop up on a certain topic in your state?  A great new tool helps you do all this and more to keep up with state government. The Sunlight Foundation has recently released Open States, a website and mobile app.

Citizens, as well as journalists, can use Open States to:

  • find one’s local legislators
  • see how s/he voted
  • correspond with the legislator
  • track bills and/or get emails about bills and topics with Scout
  • map the district in which one lives
  • find an archive of bills from past sessions
  • track similar topics, such as gun safety laws, across states

Plus is offers much more. It scrapes state websites for data – -get this — every night! So it’s up-to-date.  I’m amazed by all the coding that makes this possible.

The quickest way to learn how to use this great tool — is by watching this four minute video.

This graphic shows how MinnPost used OpenState data to give a year-end roundup of state activity

This graphic shows how MinnPost used OpenState data to give a year-end roundup of state activity

The website and mobile app are a project of the Sunlight Foundation. It’s a seven-year old non-profit begun by securities lawyer Michael Klein with a purpose to use the Internet and new technology to make government more transparent. The foundation is a  reputable organization with a veteran of campaign disclosure heading a staff of about 40. The advisory board includes  notables, such as execs from Harvard, Wikipedia, and Apple.

If you’re interested in how a “community” of developers built this using  open-source, this video explains it. And for you data hounds, Open States  offers all its data, including the  API, bulk downloads and the Open States iOS Application.

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Apr 01

Find Graduation Rates For College Sports

Michigan or Syracuse?  Both are teams I follow and cheer for. But I’ve found out that Michigan has already beat the Orange. Not  in the NCAA tournament — but in the percentage of college basketball players who are graduated.

Take a look at the Final Four teams:

Michigan  58%

Syracuse  50%

Louisville  33%

Wichita  State  30%

The ranking is based on the NCAA’s graduation success rate (GSR) which takes into account students who transfer in and those who leave for the NBA, but are in good standing. It’s probably a little fairer comparison than the federal graduation rate (FGR) which looks solely at who comes in as a first-year student and whether s/he is graduated.

You can get these scores for your home teams in basketball as well as other sports and look at coaches and other data. Just click the link in the paragraph above.

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