Category: Journalism

New York Times Link Generator

For those of you who have ever considered linking (or e-mail links) to stories in the New York Times but worry about it disappearing into its archives never to be seen again, worry no more. The form on that link will generate a non-decaying link to New York Times stories and when folks click on one of these links, they don’t have to sign into the NYT site, and they won’t have to pay a fee to read the story, even if it’s in the archives.

Now I just need to go through my archives for NYT stories and see if any of them can be salvaged. Link via BB.

January 27, 2005

How Has America’s Tsunami Media Coverage Been?

According to one professor, American’s media coverage has been “great at explaining what a tsunami is. But otherwise I can see why the rest of the world thinks Americans care about death and destruction only when Americans are involved.” He makes some very good points about the coverage. Full Story. Link from Barney.

Confirmed death toll now stands at 158,247.

January 6, 2005

Access to GuruNet is Now Free

If you do any sort of research at all online, this is a happy day for you.

GuruNet, the very useful and formerly subscription-based ready-reference web database and client app, full of fast facts and other information from over 100 reference sources, has launched a new site: Answers.com and is now available for free.

That’s right, the complete database, is now accessible via a web interface or a “1-click” client app (Windows or Mac), is available at no charge. Here’s a directory of the sources available from Answers.com.

This is an incredible resources for researchers, so be sure to book mark it.

January 4, 2005

What Bloggers and Journalists Can Learn From Each Other

Steve Outing has written a couple of great articles on not only what journalists can learn from bloggers but what bloggers can learn from journalists. Thanks CyberJ for the links.

December 29, 2004

Typography of Newspaper Front Pages

I studied (and practiced) newspaper design in college, and really enjoyed it. Still, to this day, I’m a typography junkie, and I love it when I read things like this. A study was done comparing and compiling what the top 100 newspapers are doing with their typefaces on their front pages. Here’s the full PDF file of the study results. It’s interesting stuff, but I’ll stop here, as it maybe interests about two of the regular readers of this site.

December 19, 2004

It’s A Great Time For Researchers

There are lots of things going on that is going to make researcher’s lives much easier. Google announces plans to digitize millions of books. Lexis Nexis launches their AlaCarte service (and if you know anything about that database, you know how large it is). And on the other side of the pond, The Scotsman is going to make nearly 200 years of content available online (thanks Neil for that). I really hope all of this starts a good trend where instead of pouring through a crapload of documents while witting at the library (which is what I had to do for this project in college), I can sit on my butt and get reliable, citable, information all online.

December 16, 2004

Wanted: The Ultimate Note Taker

Barney and I were talking about this the other day. I really wish that somebody could create what he’s looking for, as I know I needed one when I was reporting more (as I’m in the same boat as he):

I’m a reporter. I skipped third grade, so I’m sure I missed some handwriting classes. Ever since, my handwriting has sucked, especially when someone is speaking fast and I’m trying to get down every interesting word. It’s sort of a self-encryption – if I don’t transcribe the notes within 12-24 hours, even I can’t make out what it says. (It’s why I love phone interviews – not out of sheer laziness – well, not just that – but I’m a real fast typist, so those notes are 1,000 times better.)

Sooo…. there’s voice-recognition software out there, right? Getting better all the time? But apparently you still have to train the thing? I’d LOVE to tape interviews, rather than scribble them, then upload the audio file and have a program turn it into text! Heck, I’d settle for 30 percent accuracy, that’d be better than my stinkin’ notes!

Does anybody know if such a thing exists or is even on the horizon? I know it would require a good chunk of CPU power, but those portables/PDAs/etc… are getting pretty dang powerful. It would be a blessing for so many reporters, that’s for sure.

December 13, 2004

Free Press Release Distribution

This is one for the bookmarks, as I know I’ll need this link in the future for some stuff I’m doing at work (and I know there are PR people that read this site).

Express-Press-Release.com is a free, simple, easy, express and very effective way to distribute over the web your company press releases. Some of our advantages include: no registration required, human edited & monitored content, no long forms – in fact only a few fields on-line form for quick posting, we value your time, own page for each of your press releases (search engine optimized), unlimited posting, your press releases are archived and will never expire or be deleted…

November 24, 2004

We Need National Shield Laws

Senator Christopher Dodd is my new hero. He is introducing legislation that will create national shield laws. What is a shield law, you ask? It’s a law that protects journalists from revealing confidential sources of information. Confidential sources have been a huge part of some great journalism, and they need protection.

Shield laws are currently a state-level law, with thirty-one states and the District of Columbia having shield laws to protect the media from disclosing sources in state cases. The problem comes when those cases are brought on the federal level (a trivial matter for a really pissed-off lawyer), then state laws don’t apply. Thanks to stories like this and this, among others, you can start to see there is a problem. Even moreso in this interconnected online world where online journalists probably aren’t covered by state laws.

Priest and penitent, doctor and patient, attorney and client, husband and wife: They all have privileges of some sort, why can’t a journalist and his sources?

Thanks to Barney and Al, two great journalists, for these links.

November 23, 2004

Library of Congress to Digitize Old Newspapers

I’ll believe it when I see it, but I always get excited when tremendously useful information like this gets put online:

The government promises anyone with a computer will have access within a few years to millions of pages from old newspapers, a slice of American history to be viewed now only by visiting local libraries, newspaper offices or the nation’s capital.

The first of what’s expected to be 30 million digitized pages from papers published from 1836 through 1922 will be available in 2006.

[…]

Now, the only way to view the old papers is to pore through many thousands of microfilm reels at the Library of Congress, regional libraries and newspaper offices.

Full Story.

November 23, 2004