Oct 16

Try This One-Stop Sports Site

Posted on October 16, 2012 by Barbara Fought

Everybody likes to bad-mouth Detroit so I’m delighted to see the baseball team from my old hometown in the play-offs, especially since I live in Yankee country.  With sports a  popular topic around here, I was reminded to tell you about my one-stop shopping site for all sports.

It’s name says it all: Link-To-All Sports. It’s a directory linking you to hundreds of sports sites.  It’s not beautiful, but it’s quite functional. Here’s what it includes:

  • Scoreboards from league sites and ESPN
  • Direct links to sports pages on AP, ESPN, CNN/SI, CBS Sports, CNN/SI, ESPN, FoxSports,  SportingNews, Yahoo! Sports
  • Newspaper sports sections from all across the US
  • Sports on TV
  • Sports on radio
  • Fantasy sports
  • Injury reports
  • Guide to sports bars

And a whole lot more. They are all direct links — click and you’re there. Check it out and tell @ReadyReporter below if you know another one-stop site that has more links.

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Oct 03

Internet Archive May Be Best Research Tool Ever

Posted on October 3, 2012 by Barbara Fought

I can’t imagine how it does it, but the Internet Archive says it has collected most everything that’s every been published on the Internet — 150 billion web pages! Plus it has recorded all the TV news shows produced since 2009, as well as digitized books, 200,000 free digital audio recordings, and much more.  It claims to have three times the data that the Library of Congress keeps.

It’s all searchable. Best part about it — it’s all free.

It claims two million visitors per day so seems to me any communications professional should know this site!

When you have a few minutes go check it out.  Here are the top three ways I think it can be helpful for journalists:

  • background yourself on an event or topic in the past
  • fact check what a politician really said
  • use its “Wayback Machine” to find content on now-defunct website.

If you’ve used the Internet Archive for research in a story, please let @ReadyReporter know how, in the comment box below.

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Sep 25

Explain the Yom Kippur to Viewers, Readers, Listeners

Posted on September 25, 2012 by Barbara Fought

At sunset Jews will be observing Yom Kippur, the holiest of days in the Jewish calendar. Some of you may be doing live shots from temples or interviewing a rabbi or alerting your audience to traffic tie-ups near synagogues.

If you need some background on Yom Kippur, here are quality sources:

  • Page on Judaism includes an explainer about Yom Kippur from Beliefnet
  • Quick read about Judaism from Religion Writers
  • Stylebook that explains what a cantor and a rabbi are, among other terms — also from Religion Writers
  • population of Jews involved in synagogues or religious organizations in your area via Association of Religion Data Archive (search by zip code and be sure to total Conservative, Orthodox and Reform)

A blessed holiday to those observing.

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Sep 19

Find Out What Medical Terms Mean

Posted on September 19, 2012 by Barbara Fought

NIH makes searching for medical terms easy – -and the results are trustworthy.

If an AP story, a medical article or a medical staffer  uses a term you don’t understand, here’s a great site, Health Information,  to bookmark for all medical terms. The source is good — the National Institutes for Health.

This site includes an alphabetical list, as well as a search box (see right).  Just search for your term or plug it in to the search box.  You can count on the quality of this information, so make it your one-stop site for medical info.

Let ReadyReporter know below  of other sites you trust for medical information.

 

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Sep 12

How to verify an online source

Posted on September 12, 2012 by Barbara Fought

I was just checking a website purported to have helpful information about health care law.  The website didn’t list anything about the staff or owner in its “About” section.  When I checked who had registered the site I found a name, phone number and a name of a law firm.  The phone number didn’t work I went to the firm’s website but didn’t see the registrant’s name or a similar phone number.

Now the site might be valid, but I’m not ready to trust it.

Here’s 5  steps to verify who is behind a website:

  1. Check what it says about itself on the website. A quality website will put that information or link on its first page or will have a “Contact Us” button with contact information.
  2. Find related sites, those that link to or from the website in question or have some relationship. Use this formula in a search engine:  Related:xxxxx.yyy  (with xxxxx.yyy being the web address without the www), for example: related:cnn.com
  3. If you have access to a newspaper database through a local library, check if any other reporter has mentioned the website in an article and what s/he says
  4. Find out who registered the site at Network Solutions WHOIS (or other similar sites)  For example if you check out readyreporter.com at Network Solutions you’ll find my name and contact information. At WhoisMind you’ll find a listing for Syracuse University, my employer.
  5. Use your journalistic skills to evaluate the site using the criteria from librarians Jan Alexander and  Marsha Ann Tate:
  • Authority: who is behind this site and is that entity legitimate
  • Accuracy: does it list sources and appears free of grammatical and spelling errors
  • Objectivity: does it appear to have a bias and is advertising clearly separate from the other content
  • Currency: is it up to date with sources clearly listed
  • Coverage: does it appear to be comprehensive or if affiliated with a print publication does it have all the material online 
Let ReadyReporter know other tips you have for checking out the legitimacy of web sites. 
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Sep 05

Help for finding federal statistics

Posted on September 5, 2012 by Barbara Fought

I spent 30 minutes on a federal agency website recently, looking for what I thought should be simple information. I finally had to call the public relations staff to get an analyst to help me.

So here is a good one-stop-shopping site for federal statistics: FedStats.  It has thousands of direct links, an index, a way to search by state or agency, and much more.

Need to know coal production this year for an environmental story? It’s there.  Or some data on the minimum wage to add depth to your back-to-school shopping story?  You can even generate your own tables for some data.

Try it out. And if you just look through the list of topics, you might generate some story ideas.

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Aug 28

Emergency Tips to Give Readers, Viewers, Listeners

Posted on August 28, 2012 by Barbara Fought

Even if you’re not in the path of the hurricane, consumers find it helpful to know what to put in an emergency kit. And with all the disaster coverage going on now, they are likely ready to read/hear tips on what to do or not to do in case of a natural disaster.

Here are some resources:

If you’ve found other good resources, let us know below.

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Aug 21

Story Leads on Education

Posted on August 21, 2012 by Barbara Fought

Tired of doing the same-old back-to-school stories or looking for new ways to do education stories in coming weeks? Well, readers, viewers and listeners are tired of seeing the same old storylines.  So what else can you do?

The Education Writers Association, a group of journalists who want to foster better writing about education, has published a webinar on how to find new ways to do the first-day-of-school stories that are unique. Three veterans — a public radio editor and two newspaper reporters — share some good ideas. They offer audio and slides, plus resources.  The first person gives general leads and ways to generate story ideas. The other two reporters give more specific story ideas for K-12.

For example, one of the first ideas offered is to consider the effect of the recession on your local school districts.  “Is this the first year your schools will be without something or the first year something is coming back?” asked Phyllis Fletcher, KUOW public radio.

The webinar is an hour.  But if that’s too much time, listen to what you can or listen to portions now and then.

Other great resources on this site: Check out thes Story Starters section when you come up dry for ideas.  Its list of  sources  can be helpful for background for TV reporters or audio and quotes for radio, print and web journalists. If you need some stats or background, read up on the reports it’s issued on teacher effectiveness and school turnarounds.

For more leads, follow EWA for more ideas on facebook or twitter. 

Listeners and readers do want good education reporting — let’s give them something other than the routine.

 

 

 

 

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Aug 13

Use MedLinePlus for Research on Mental Health Issues

Posted on August 13, 2012 by Barbara Fought

With the attention paid to mental health issues recently —  thes shootings at the Sikh templeand Colorado movie theater, as well as the guilty plea of the Arizona shooter — I checked out what I had in my list of helpful sites for learning more about mental health issues.

Medline Plus is a quality source, a service of the  U.S. National Library of Medicine  and National Institutes of Health.  Its page on Personality Disorders is a good site when working on mental health stories.  See the topics at the left for the variety of information you can find here, including views and handouts.

MedLine Plus also has information for more than  900 diseases and conditions and checks the quality of its links before publishing them.  While you generally want to have more than one source, this is a good one you can trust.

 

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Aug 09

Tips for Crime and Safety Stories

Posted on August 9, 2012 by Barbara Fought

I’ve been updating a list of best websites in each beat for student journalists at The Newhouse School and found a gem for those of you who cover crime. And most general assignment reporters do!

The Criminal Justice Journalists publish a textbook-like site on the web, The Crime Guide, for free. I’ve found it a phenomenal help.

Look at all the topics covered:

  • The crime beat
  • Juvenile justice
  • Drug law enforcement
  • Racial and ethnic issues
  • Crime victims; ethics
  • Courts – -criminal and civil
  • How prosecutors work
  • Guns and gun control
  • Domestic violence
  • Prisons,  jails, sentencing, and community corrections

With the recent news about gun violence, I found the chapter on guns very helpful. Wish I’d had this background information  when I was doing stories on guns. Reporter David J. Krajicek notes that gun advocates always criticize reporters for getting details about guns wrong and said he keeps a paper copy of a gun digest handy to look up guns as he writes about them. He goes on from there to give a great primer on guns.  Only weakness is the content hasn’t been updated since 2007.

But check this site out. A few minutes here and you’ll be much more knowledgeable.  And that’s the goal, isn’t it?  Quicker, better, smarter reporting.

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