Columbia J-school students annotate a lecture by Prof. Sree Sreenivasan
Tuesday, Aug. 21, 2007 / UPDATED: Aug. 19, 2008
Using Google Docs, a group of students took "group notes" online.
{ Find these ANNOTATED NOTES at SreeTips.com/smartersurfing }
The original handouts:
Start with SreeTips.com & Sree.net/tips/web.html
A SITE OF YOUR OWN: Want to build a personal website?
See this SreeTip (sree.net/tips/websites.html)
TRACK THE CHANGING MEDIA LANDSCAPE:
2008 Note-takers: Mathew Katz, Erin Siegal
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UTILITIES/TOOLS
(notes by Elaine He)
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SEARCH TRICKS
(notes by Lam Thuy Vo)
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FINDING FACTS/STATS
(notes by Channtal Fleischfresser)
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FINDING SOURCES
(notes by Sandra Larriva Henaine)
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EVERYTHING ELSE
SUGGESTIONS FROM STUDENTS:
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Sree Notes
Located online at: snurl.com/smartersurfing
taken by Erin Siegal
August 2008
Begins with a discussion about cats’ reactions to men with varying beard shapes and sizes…to illuminate the point that you really can’t trust stats.
See the hoax stuff here and here.
#1 thing that fools people- statistics. MEGO “my eyes glaze over”- people take numbers for granted. It has all the elements of the classic stuff that get journalists in trouble…
A few yrs ago, NYT frontpage was defaced. That kind of defacing is easy to spot. What’s more dangerous is to alter the records, change the facts/stats, RBI data for baseball, speeches by Churchill in the 1930’s, etc.
One of the things I remind people about is this: watching Good Morning America, they said that the only blonds left in the world would be in Iceland. They were disappearing. credited to the WHO, World Health Organization- Sree and wife questioned this. It was a complete hoax, but was picked up by TV, big publications, BECAUSE of the details in the story and the WHO name.
Student cites example of faux WTO website made by protestors, which appears to be a branch of the authentic WTO site.
Sree recommends www.RefDesk.com is the “factchecker of the internet.”
Run by Bob Drudge, father of Mat Drudge. He dragged Matt into Circuit City in 1996, said I’m gonna buy you a computer. Sree mentions use of Drudge Report in newsrooms, and how if he only has a few minutes, that’s the site he checks.
Good tool on the library website is on the library website, you can have a conversation with a library. You’ll see “ask a Librarian” or “Library Chat.” Good tool.
Niles Guide to Data on the Internet: Best way to do a percentages story, standar deviation, data analysis, etc. This is all written by a journo, for journos. www.robertniles.com. How to use Math, etc. Section called “Basic Stuff”- best place to get federal statistics. Also includes crime stats, economic stats, health, etc. Excellent section on tracking law and politics data. All kinds of things- even the full text of the Bible. Misquoted Bible passages= tons of angry letter to the ed.
Stats.org: Run by J-school grad, Trevor Butterwoirth now at the FT, he looks at how journalists look at stats and how they screw up
Online Conversion: Converts numbers- miles to KM, etc
Political Contributions: FundRace.org. Owned by HuffPo, started by two guys, hows you donations around the city/country, red state/blue state color coded maps for simple analysis of political donors by geography. Also includes names, profession, amount of money donated. You can search the database by last name. All contributions are public record, but they used to be buried in courtrooms, etc. Now they’re public, and easy to find. It’s an advantage- until your name shows up! Keep an eye on it in case you have a name similar to someone else’s.
Student question: How do we know we can trust this data?
FECinfo.com and opensecrets.com are even more trusted, not mash-ups.
Facts about Countries: Sree says use CIA Factbook- use it out of spite, it’s your tax dollars at work! Get a tax rebate while using! Nationmaster.com is a website with 8,000 sets of statistics, “it’s really good.” You can use in RW1, use it for example to compare the GDP of Albania to the States, if there’s an Albanian population in your beat neighborhood. Get detailed stats here.
How do we attribute this stuff?
See on page where they’re from- CIA factbook, UNESCO, etc. Quote that. Double check that before attribution. Stats are only as accurate as the feed itself.
Statemaster.com is another branch, for US states. None of this is a substitute for traditional reporting, but a way to get more into your reporting.
How do we find out delegates for our beat?
Go to main Congress website, www.congress.gov. Go to all original sites as much as possible.
Refer to GoogleNotes from Sree’s lecture last year for tips on “things you don’t know Google does.”
Says on a PC, beware of pausing the Google “VCR” that records everything you do. Google Scholar is about reducing noise, that is, streamlining your results pages to “scholarly articles.” Definition of what constitutes a “scholarly article’ was not mentioned.
www.twingine.com: a search engine mash-up that will pull up Yahoo and Google side by side
www.searchme.com: Very pretty cover flow search engine, visually gorgeous!
Anywhere you see the little blue word “tip” on your sheets means that Sree’s written an article about it.
How-to site, via video: www.Videojug.com shows you how to do anything and everything. How to tie a bowtie!
Finding sources section: These are ONLY supplemental sources. “Who Is John Doe? and where to get the paper on him” is a great paper, by a NYT investigative reporter, tells about how to dig… very useful to find almost anything.
Ethnic Press Guides: translated into English. “Voices that Must Be Heard”- you can subscribe via email. Under IndyPressNY’s ethnic press guide.
You are encourage to use Yahoo’s “Full Coverage” search feature.
You are encouraged to read Romanesko everyday, off the Poynter site. “I do 3 times a day,” says Sree.
Student question: Can you recommend a site that provides explanations of journalists’ lingo?
Start with Wikipedia.
Facebook: If you link to people, especially faculty, write at least a line to remind people who you are. Another info session on Facebook for journalists will be held next week.
Flock.com- waste of time, and personalizes your browsing experience via utilization of Twitter feed, Flickr, Picasa, etc
Open source software: OpenOffice.org to get Word- and it’s free, legal.
Question: What about music downloading?
Totally different. See second sheet of tips.
SnipShot.com is the best alternative to Photoshop.
All of the freeware programs should be considered Version 1- (*es note: that is, incomplete, possibly buggy, etc. Proceed with caution.)
Mogulus is like BlogTalkRadio for video- live streaming broadcast. “The trick is not having the technology, but something to say!”
QIK- enables live streaming from your cell phone.
“Cloud computing:” changes the way everyone works- all through Google Docs. Raises security issues, backup issues, etc.
Sree does not backup- he trusts his work to Google and a cyber cloud. Make sure you Google Alert for your own name- shameless ego-surfing is ok! Pull down your shades and indulge!
Epicurious.com is the best for recipes! RecipeZaar.com lets you combine one shopping list if you’re making different dishes.
www.yes.com allows you to search radio stations everywhere, so you can a specific playlist organized by time.
Other sites recommended by other students in the audience include:
www.coil.com
www.last.fm.com
www.knol.com
www.chowhound.com
www.wordreference.com
Closing thoughts:
Lots of info packed in/. You are not supposed to get everything right away. That’s why there’s handouts. Consider this the first stab at this kinda stuff. There are 2 things to help: I’m around this year if you want to come in and talk, try- here is how to find me. Go to my website (sree.net) and my calendar is public, you can see where I am all the time. my office hours are in there. Yes its insane to make it public, but it’s there/ Stop by anytime and ask questions. It’s off sree.net/sked.
Secondly, there will be Web Coach Wednesday from 12-4 the New Media fellow Dave and Keenan will be in the Student Center- everything from Photoshop to video camera.
Another tip: Make friend with the New Media students! Befriend them, make or buy them dinner! There are 50 in this year’s class, the most ever.
Last couple things: New Media skillset, new media mindset. Part of this is just journalism: don’t substitute for regular reporting, but make your web time better and more efficient. we’ll have a lot of talks and events this year where you can come and find out- Tues Nov 11th is one I want you to make- a stellar panel of journos and others talking about the changing media landscape. Past panelists include the founders of Craigslist and Wikipedia.
In the spring, we have a new media elective for non majors. If you take a skills class, you can still acquire new media skills- go to web coach Wednesdays, or just utilize what you learn in RW1! Please do that!
Dean Sree's Lecture Notes
Aug 27, 2009
Taken by Tim Kiladze
Overarching point: CHECK OUT SREETIPS.COM. The evening's lecture was an overview of some sites. Sreetips is the lecture x a hundred.
Helpareporter.com
You send an e-mail to an e-mail address they provide, and the service will send it out to PR firms, etc. and they'll get back to you with sources. Note: Dean Sree highly cautions against using it for RW1 because they don't really care about small student stories. But it could be very useful for the master's project. Dean Sree recommends even trying it out just to see what sources are out there. Couldn't hurt, righttt? A part-time student said she's used it before, posted her deadline in the e-mail, and she got calls within two hours.
Archive.org
A historical database of old webpages. Use the 'WayBackMachine' archive. You can see what websites used to look like back in the day.
NationMaster.com
Helps you get statistics for your stories. Click on the 'Select Economy Stat' drop down menu and you'll see the plethora of statistics that are readily available. Can be useful if you are writing a story about someone who came here from say, Albania, and you want to know about life over there.
Statemaster.com
Very similar to NationMaster but has statistics for U.S. states.
Refdesk.com
Good place to find statistics on all kinds of things.
Fedstats.gov
Collects the statistics from 100 different agencies in one place. Dean Sree says that if you call a source, you'll sometimes find that they're reading aloud from this site.
Fundrace.org
Fundraising stats for political parties in the U.S. For example: go to the New York page. You can see all of the Democratic and Republican financial supporters with their donation amounts. Say you're working on a story and your source says that they're a lifelong Republican, you can go to this site and see if they've ever donated to a Democrat. There are other sites that can do the same thing, but they aren't as aesthetically pleasing.
Topix.com
You can enter a zip code and find all of the news items for that area.
Everyblock.com
Stories straight from the block.
Snitch.name
Dean Sree mentioned it last week, but it's a place where you can find where your name shows up on the web.
Digg, Reddit
Can get you a lot of traffic for stories that you post online. More on this at a lecture later this semester.
Clusty.com (not to be confused with crusty)
Allows you to search for a topic and it will then cluster the results into categories that are related to each other.
Arik from BusinessWeek shows up. Senior technology columnist. Peep arik.org. He provides his cell phone and e-mail, and he's always accessible.
How To Effectively Use Google
The purpose of this is to reduce the noise (i.e. reduce the number of unneeded search results show up)
Google Alerts
SIGN UP. Even if it's just for your own name. It sends you an e-mail when something about your name (or whatever you search) is updated, or has more info added about it, online.
Using 'site:'
If you were to search 'sree site: columbia.edu', you would get only the columbia websites (so they would start with columbia.edu) where Dean Sree's shows up
Using the '-' sign
If you were to search Sree-columbia, you would get all of the webpages that have the word/name Sree without any mention of Columbia on it
Using " "
Searches for exactly what is put in between the quotation marks
FlightAware.com
If you know the airline name and flight number (i.e. Jet blue 212), you can find where that flight currently is. So if the flight is mid-air over the U.S., you can find out how far it is away from the destination
Google.com/publicdata
Aggregates a whole bunch of data in very easy-to-use way. For example: in the lecture we pulled up unemployment numbers for New York vs. Nebraska since 1990 in a nice, succinct line graph.
Google Scholar
A very quick way to see if you can access academic journal articles.
Google Translator (translate.google.com)
Results are a little bit iffy, but you can an estimation of what something in another language means. You can also put a URL into the translate box and it will translate the webpage into another language, in the same layout!
Google Calculator
Can do "2 x 2 =" and it will give you the answer.
Or could type in "2 mi = ? km" and it will give you the answer.
(Could also use WolframAlpha: www.wolframalpha.com. Allows you to do things like type in "what is mayor bloomberg's age" Answer: 67 (Shocker of the night)) Also very helpful: "5 us dollars in UK pounds 2002" Answer: approx 3 pounds
"Whois"
If you searched 'whois arik.org' can give you details about the owner of that site, and even their home number.
Vitalchek.com
Costs $15 - When was someone born, married, died?
PACER - http://pacer.psc.uscourts.gov/
links to all of the Federal Court cases. You need a sign in and each page costs about $0.08. Allows you to read court filings and quote from them directly. And you can just keep up to date with a case you're following.
Tnid.org
If someone called you for a story and you missed the call, you can plug in the number and see who it belongs to. (Doesn't really work for a cell)
Anywho.com/rl.html
Dean Sree used to use it if there was something like a fire but it will take him a while to get there. If you enter an address, it will give you phone numbers in the area around it, so you could call neighbors to see how bad it is, if they're alive, etc.
Rootsweb.com
Can look up records of people who died.
http://investing.businessweek.com/research/company/overview/overview.asp
Allows you to look up financial information, stock quotes, etc.
Guidestar.com
Non-profit reports and Forms 990 for donors, grantmakers, and businesses
Floor opened to suggestions from students:
The public transportation feature under Google Directions - www.google.com/transit. Apparently better than hopstop.com
Oanda.com - allows you to track historical FX data
ACRIS - (just google ACRIS) New york property history. If you enter in an address, it will tell you who owns it, how much they paid for it, and their lawyer
GOOGLE VOICE (INCREDIBLE FOR JOURNALISTS)
You need an invite from Google in order to use it because it's still in beta mode, but here's how it works:
You can input a bunch of your phone numbers (your house, your cell, your cottage) and Google will give you a new number, that when dialed, will ring all of these numbers simultaneously. But more importantly, say you're on the road and someone calls your Google number and you pick up, if you press '4', Google will record the convo and save it in your account so that you can write down what you talked about later, word for word.
Iphone - Evernote app (evernote.com)
Records your voice. So you can make voice notes when on the road, save them, and then transcribe what happened when you get home later.