Hey gang,
As promised, I’m giving you the four sites with which you should be familiar. Think of these as haystacks. I’m not giving you the individual stats you’ll have to find in each of these sites. (The needles). Be familiar with US Bureau of Labor Statistics; the Census Bureau; and the CIA World Factbook. I’ll have a wildcard in there too, but it’s nothing that will throw you guys for a loop.
Today we discussed some of the more obvious (and helpful) resources. These should help you with Wednesday’s assignment (finding a database related to your enterprise story). Note on sources: I’m cribbing extensively from Dan Kennedy’s J2 blog with these link selections.
One of several Internet phone books. I find it works pretty well, but if you don’t get what you’re looking for, try something else, like 411.com or the White Pages. Look up people and businesses. One of my favorite features is that you do not have to enter a city or even a state. Obviously the more unusual a person’s name is, the better this feature works.
Enter a phone number at “Search by Phone” and chances are you’ll be able to get a name to go with the number. There are plenty of times when you’ll be thrilled to be able to do that.
Government and political sites
The danger here is falling into a bottomless pit. Here are a few key sites, but there are thousands more.
Link collections for journalists
There are so many of these sites and so little time. I am going to recommend just three, because they link to so many other sites. Caveat surfer — you’ll find a number of outdated links. Worth exploring, though.
Checking up on nonprofits
Whois
NOTE: I didn’t discuss Whois in class, but as Professor Kennedy rightly points out, it’s “one of the greatest investigative tricks on the Internet.” Now here’s Dan:
I am continually amazed at how few people know about this. Everyone who registers a domain name must list his or her name, address, telephone number and email address. It doesn’t work as well as it did a few years ago, because many people are now paying extra for privacy protection. But not everyone.
Go to whois.domaintools.com and enter drudgereport.com. We used to be able to find his address in Miami, but now we can’t. So it’s getting harder. But let’s say you want to contact someone at the Cambridge Day, and you can’t find a phone number on the site. Whois is a good way to get started.
Increasingly, people are opting for privacy protections, so this doesn’t always work. But it works often enough that you should definitely give it a try.
Again, these sites should give you not only a healthy head start on your CAR assignment for Wednesday, but will also help you with your enterprise piece in general.
This is a straightforward assignment to push you to discover some of the valuable data troves out there that will invariably help your stories. Find at least one online database that proves useful to your enterprise piece—as you’re currently conceiving of it anyway—and write about it. First, describe the resource (providing the link to it of course). Next, tell me three pieces of data you’ve either found, or expect to find, that you imagine using in your story.
Note: We’ll be discussing this in class, so this is due at 9 am Wednesday morning. I need to at least skim everyone’s submission before class.
I want you to do some digging. For example, it would not be acceptable to write about Mass. Facts or OpenSecrets.org — they’re both too obvious, and we’ve already talked about them in class. However, you could certainly write about a database you found through one of those two sites.
I don’t want a directory or a portal, whether it be Yahoo!, RefDesk.com or the like. What I do want is a site with information that a journalist could use. Examples might be sites that help you make sense of crime information, population data, records about physicians, campaign contributions, gun control or abortion rights. And this is just a small sample of what you might do.
Length: One page, printed out, single-spaced.
Deadline: Wednesday, March 12, at 9 am, emailed as an attached Word doc.
Decided to give you guys a proper break. We’ll get back into computer-assisted reporting on Monday, but in the meantime I have an assignment for Between the Lines. Write two paragraphs putting the Anschluss and July 1914 into conversation with current events. Be prepared to discuss—briefly—on Monday.
Have fun, J2 …
Topics:
1) Will the PARCC replace the MCAS? The new standardized test will have an experimental run in over 1,000 Massachusetts public schools this year. Does it represent the bright future that will be ushered in by common core standards, or another retreat by policymakers into cookie cutter education?
2) Has global warming really “paused?” Have climatologists been leading us astray all this time? Or have denialists picked up on one study and exploited it to sow doubt about long-term warming trends?
3) Is the country going to pot? Terrible puns aside, the path towards decriminalizing marijuana seems to get smoother every year, as more and more states legalize marijuana for medical and/or recreational purposes. Is this a concession that the war on drugs was a failure? How does it relate to the relaxing of “three-strike” laws. Put this trend into a local context.
4) This week the NFL became the latest battleground in civil rights, as Michael Sam, a highly-talented defensive end from the University of Missouri announced that he was gay. Will the NFL embrace Sam? Will other players follow his lead? Will football become a kinder, gentler sport as a result?
5) Whither the GOP. Speaker of the House John Boehner (R.—OH) recently passed a “clean” debt ceiling increase, infuriating his Republican colleagues but also consolidating his power base. Behind the scenes, the party is engaged in a civil war. What is the war over? How will this affect its chances in 2014 mid-term election? What does it mean for the presidential election in 2016?
As always, ping me with questions.
About half of you have emailed me asking for extensions on the government proceeding piece. You all have perfectly good reasons, most of which revolve around the fact that you couldn’t find an interesting meeting in the time allotted. As a fellow human, I sympathize with you. You are not wrong. I do not doubt your excuses one bit. Life simply got in the way of your assignment. As a journalist and a professor, I’m of a different mind. In our business, life gets in the way a lot. Your deadline, however, remains the same. Editors will expect you to file good copy, on time. Great writers who cannot do this wind up finding another line of work. Decent writers with relentless work habits succeed again and again in journalism.
So here’s good news: Turn the government proceeding piece in on time and get +2 extra credit. Turn it in on Thursday and receive full credit. Turn it in on Friday and receive one letter grade off. No exceptions. Here’s the bad news: No more extensions. I’ve given quite a few this semester, and I do you no favors by creating a lax environment when you’re unlikely to find that out in the real world.
First off, please consult the updated syllabus for new due dates. The combination of MLK Day and losing Wednesday to the grammar/style quiz threw us off schedule a bit. But only a bit. Your “talker” is now due Feb. 3. (I can hear the collective sigh of relief from across the campus.)
I won’t be here on Monday. Bill Kirtz will give a guest lecture on the art of the interview, which is a great way to open our unit on finding sources, experts, and gathering information through interviews. What is a talker? (It’s often called a “thumbsucker,” or “thinkpiece.” Whether you know it or not, you read them all the time. It’s simply a straightforward exploration of a pressing issue. Does Boston’s public transportation serve all its residents equally? If not, does the MBTA incidentally discriminate against those in lower socioeconomic strata?
Think about what this story is not. It’s not “spot news,” as we call the coverage of a breaking news item—the highway pileup; the sudden resignation of a scandal-besotted public official. Nor is it necessarily tied to a “hard peg,” which is to say, a recent event that is at the heart of the news cycle. The think piece instead takes an issue editors judge to be of broad interest and explains it in all its complexity to the readers. In my opinion, they tend to be the most interesting, enjoyable, and in some cases the easiest stories to write. But then I’m a nerd that likes nothing better than calling smart people and asking them lots of questions.
Which is how you should think of your assignment.
So: Let’s call it 500-600 words words. You should talk to at least three experts, and you need to quote two of them. Only one of these may be a Northeastern University employee. The first step, though, is to become something of an expert on your subject. This is easier than it sounds. Simply spend a solid chuck of time (five to eight hours) researching the subject through Google News or Google Scholar. It’s okay if these resources are new to you. We’ll talk more about them on Wednesday.
Here are the topics you may choose from:
• Should the US or other Western countries boycott the Russian Olympics?
• Legalization of marijuana: A long overdue shift in drug policy or a tragic mistake?
• Advice for Mayor Walsh: What do some of Boston’s leading thinkers believe are the greatest challenges facing Boston?
Again, when I approach a piece like this, I tend to spend three or four hours just searching news and academic databases digging around for anything and everything significant that has been written on my subject over the course of the last year or two. I then print these out and highlight anything that strikes me as interesting or relevant or useful. Remember: This should be a fun assignment, so have fun!
A Capital City police detective is under investigation by the CCPD for extracting false confessions, said a CCPD spokesperson earlier today.
Detective Phillip “Philly” Carpetti, a 25-year police veteran, has long been a controversial figure. He had previously been accused of obtaining false confessions in previous convictions. These accounts were all strenuously denied by Carpetti and CCPD spokespeople. Carpetti had the highest “clearance rate,” or solved murders, in the homicide bureau.
Earlier this week the Gotham Court of Appeals overruled the murder conviction of Brendan Higgins after DNA evidence linked the crime to a known convict currently serving time in the Gotham Penitentiary. Higgins had been arrested by Carpetti and convicted based on a confession gained while in Carpetti’s custody. The CCPD spokesperson refused to say whether the two cases were related.
Ideally most of you have either completed, or are nearly completed with your reporting. Now it’s time to write your profile. I thought I would quote this bit of advice from cubreporters.com. Hope you find it useful:
A profile story is a portrait of a person in words. Like the best painted portraits, the best profiles capture the character, spirit and style of their subjects. They delve beneath the surface to look at what motivates people, what excites them, what makes them interesting. Good profiles get into the heart of the person and find out what makes them tick.The problem is that lives are hard to fit into newspaper articles, no matter how much space is allotted for them. Reporters who simply try to cram into a profile all the facts they can come up with inevitably end up with something more like a narrative version of a resume than a journalism story.Like all other stories, profiles must have an angle, a primary theme. That theme should be introduced in the lead, it should be explored and often it will be returned to at the end of the story. Something of a person’s character, spirit and style will then be revealed through that theme.Whatever the theme, it takes a thorough understanding of a person’s life to create a revealing sketch of that life. Reporters should spend time with their subjects while they’re doing whatever makes them newsworthy. For example, if you’re writing about a ballerina, try to observe her performing on stage or at least practicing in her dance studio.Good profiles – and all good journalism stories – show, instead of telling. Use all five senses when you interview someone. What are they wearing? Do they fiddle nervously with their pencil? Is there a chocolate smudge on their shirt? Is their hair stylishly spiked?Because a profile cannot be complete without quotes – there is no way to write a profile without extensive interviewing. Frequently, more than one interview is necessary unless the writer already knows his subject well Good profiles also contain quotes from people who know the subject of your story well. Spice your story with the words of family, friends, enemies and the subjects themselves.Finally, good profiles strike the appropriate tone. Think about your profile – is it someone who is involved in a serious issue, like eating disorders? You probably want to be more serious in your tone. Is it someone playful – a comic book artist, perhaps? You can be more playful. But remember – your personal opinion is not appropriate. You are there to merely paint a picture of this person – to let the facts speak for themselves.
I stand corrected. The AP Stylebook says to always spell out units of measurement. To wit:
“How many ounces are in a cup?” I asked my cousin.
“Duh. There are eight ounces in a cup,” she answered.
Thus, whether preceded by a numeral or not, spell it out. By the way, you might notice that the reason this headline is able to reference the Wizard of Oz (Oz as in the magical kingdom, not as in the abbreviation for an ounce) is because of the music within language I referenced this morning. LI-ons and TI-gers and BEARS, OH my. “Cups and feet and meters, oh my,” just wouldn’t have had the same effect. But then that’s neither here nor there. Goodnight J2.
Journalism 2—Spring 2014 