Matt Waite, a reporter at the St. Petersburg Times,
is one of the bright lights in analytic journalism.  (And “bright”
has all the meanings you can apply.)  He is one of a handful of
the next generation, i.e. folks <40 years old, who are pushing some
intellectual and methodologtical boulders up the institutional hill
that is classic journalism. 



Matt has
created a non-rant blog describing his stories and projects in St.
Pete.  It's a learning resource.  See  www.mattwaite.com

Friend Barbara Semonche,
queen of the news research kingdom (queendom?) at the Univ. of North
Carolina School of Journalism and Mass Communications, posts these
always-pertinent observations today on the NewsLib listserv:



“Journalism/mass
comm students will be returning to colleges and universities within the
next week or two. Time to get fresh examples for these emerging
journalists about just what news researchers are capable of doing for
and with them.



       Here is what I'm seeking for our beginning and advanced reporting students.



 
     Current (within the last couple of years or so)
examples/strategies of the research methods and sources news librarians
used for both investigative projects and breaking stories. Here is what
I have now:



1. Kathy Hansen's and Nora Paul's recent book, “Behind the Message: Information strategies for Communicators,”
has a classic example of a 1994 Minneapolis Star-Tribune story by
reporter Tony Kennedy which was enhanced by not only his investigative
research, but supplemented by the efforts of the Star-Tribune's news
research team. The case study in the book reprinted Kennedy's article
on the privately-held Schwan Company and then detailed each fact with
what resources were discovered and used.  Interesting note: the
local public library and librarian proved to be a gold mine of
information for Kennedy as did local interviews with former Schwan
employees.



2.
Alison Head's (former head of research at The Press Democrat in Santa
Rosa, California) handout on the news research involved with a breaking
crime story. She took the text of reporter Tom Chorneau's 1995 article
and

then
highlighted all the resources used to get the data for the story. A
sort of “Anatomy of Crime Research.” [Note: please check this URL:

http://parklibrary.jomc.unc.edu/head2.html ]



3. John
Martin's (St. Pete Times' researcher) 1998 description of how he worked
with a reporter on retrieving information on an alledged murderer's
identity on deadline. [Note: please check this URL: http://parklibrary.jomc.unc.edu/stpete.html

The mission of the Annie E. Casey Foundation is “to
build better futures for disadvantaged children and their families in
the United States.”  One of the ways it does that is by packaging
data about America's children in a form that reporters can easily
access and use.  Hence, the “Kids Count State-Level Data Online”
site. 


“This new database, launched in July 2005,
contains more than 75 measures of child well-being, including the 10
measures used in our annual KIDS COUNT Data Book. It includes the most
timely data available on Education, Employment and Income, Poverty,
Health, Basic Demographics, and Youth Risk Factors for the U.S., all 50
states, and D.C. Depending on availability, three to five years of
trend data is currently available for most indicators.

“This
easy-to-use, powerful online database allows you to generate custom
reports for a geographic area (Profiles) or to compare geographic areas
on a topic (Ranking, Maps, and Line Graphs).“

From Directions Magazine:

“Machover Associates, a computer
graphics consultancy reports
that the worldwide market for scientific visualization in 2D and 3D
will grow from $10.7 billion in 2005 to $17.2 billion in 2010. The big
money is in 3-D imaging, the majority of which comes from private
industry. Still, a substantial amount of federal research funding is
available as well. Geospatial technologies have a role here: one
visualization film shown at Siggraph last week illustrated the 2002
Elbe River flooding and the use of geodata played in predicating the
need for evacuations.“

Tuesday, August 9, 2005

“Men and Women Seek Cartographic Intelligence Almost Equally

Men may not stop and ask, but according to a recent Hitwise study, 
49.1 percent of visitors to mapping Web sites were male for the
four-week period ending July 16, 2005.

 “Researching directions on the Web before a drive is a different
context than asking for directions once you're on the road and lost,”
said Bill Tancer, General Manager, Worldwide Research, Hitwise.
“However, the equal propensity of men to
use Internet mapping services represents not only an important
demographic attribute for marketers and mapping services, but insight
into the potential demand and adoption for mapping and driving
direction services”.

 More information for the week ending July 23, 2005 includes such thing as:

• 
  Yahoo! Maps and AOL's MapQuest dominate the online mapping category, with a combined category market share of 74.4 percent
  
• 
  Google Maps has become the third most popular map site since its launch
  in early 2005, and now claims 9.5 percent of visits to the category.  
• 
  Only 11.3 percent of Google Maps visitors departed directly for another map site, down from 17.6 percent in April 2005.
  
• 
  In the entire mapping category, 5.8 percent of visitors depart directly to a competing map site.
  
• 
  57 percent of visits to sites in the Travel/Maps category originated at a portal site or a search engine.
  
• 
  The term “mapquest” was the second most popular term (behind “ebay”)
  entered into all major Internet search engines (for the four weeks
  ending July 23, 2005.)
• 
  The term “maps” was number five and “driving directions” was number 18.
  
• 
  Visits to online map sites peak in the summer months, notes the report.
  The market share of visits to map sites increased 35 percent in June
  2004 versus December 2004. A category with a similar seasonal pattern
  is Travel/Destinations &
  Accommodation, which increased 95 percent in the same time period.
  Sites in this category include motels, amusement parks, and National
  Parks, which vacationers typically reach by car. 

From Journalism.co.uk….

Innovative software pinpoints news by location

Posted: 2 August 2005 By: Jemima Kiss

Email: jemima@journalism.co.uk

A UK firm has developed a free, innovative tool that plots breaking news by location.

To use NewsGlobe, web users must have Google Earth installed. More information is available on Daden's website.

Hey, we've been asking that question for decades now.  Turns out we are not alone.  The same thing occurred to Adena Schutzberg, Executive Editor of Directions Magazine.  In a current article, “Geographic (and Other Types) of Metadata in the Newsroom,” she writes:

“Despite the growth of the Web and the maturation of
search engines, somehow word is not trickling down to the news media
about geographic and other types of metadata. I’m seeing just as many
stories, especially on local
newspaper websites, which convey no information regarding the location
of the events in question….”

Rave on, Adena, rave on.

The guys from The Media Center write:

“We wanted to give you a heads up on a conference we're conducting in
New York, Oct. 5, called We Media. Marketing is about to begin in
earnest, and we're sure our highly verbal communications director,
Gloria Pan, will make us sound much smarter and hipper than we really
are. Some extraordinary people will be joining us. We hope you will
too.

The Oct. 5 program, hosted at The Associated Press headquarters
in New York, will include a series of discussions that will frame the
next phase of participatory communications and the opportunities we see
emerging. Details and online registration are here.

We'd love to see you there, with colleagues, and we hope you can
share this information throughout your organization. We expect about
220 people. And of course, best – we'd love to see you there to
represent your company as a member of The Media Center Network. More
about the Network here.

We're also seeking sponsors to help defray the costs of the
event, so we'd be grateful for any effort you could make to persuade
the right people within your organization to sponsor the conference.
Sponsor details are here.

Regards,

Andrew and Dale

:: The Media Center

:: 11690 Sunrise Valley Drive, Reston, VA 20191 USA

:: o: 703.715.3318 | f: 703.935.1083

The gang at AskSam has posted a searchable file of John Robert's work, at least that released so far.

Check out “the entire text of all 49 published opinions of Judge John G. Roberts on-line in a searchable
database. You can search and browse through the information from your
Web browser.”  Go to http://www.asksam.com/ebooks/johnroberts/

The Published Opinions of Judge John G. Roberts

Free Searchable Version

Search and
analyze the published opinions of Supreme Court nominee, Judge John G Roberts.

On
July 19, 2005, Judge John G. Roberts was nominated by President George
W. Bush to fill the vacancy on the U.S. Supreme Court left by the
retirement of Associate Justice Sandra Day O'Connor. In two years on
the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, Judge
Roberts has helped decide about 120 cases and written 49 published
opinions.”

We recently enjoyed meeting Stuart Kasdin at a Netlogo workshop. 
Stuart spent some years in the Peace Corps, then a decade with the OMB
(Office of Budget Management).  Currently he's working on his
doctorate in Poly Sci at UC-Santa Barbara.

Stuart has also been thinking about “performance measurement,” the
term-of-art used by auditors and managers of government agencies. 
(In the private sector, the term often used is “forensic
accounting.”)  We have generally thought well of performance
measurement, especially as a vocabulary and tool journalists should
know about to better understand and evalutate the performance of
government.  Stuart, however, has thought about this in greater
depth, and from the perspective of someone inside the government. 
His paper, “When Do Results Matter?  Using Budget Systems to
Enhance Program Performance and Agency Management” is worthwhile
reading.


ABSTRACT: “Managing by results” is a widely used public
budgeting approach based on developing performance measures that display the
progress of a program toward its stated objectives.  This paper considers the complex environment of government
budgeting and how to establish budget systems that can successfully encourage
improved performance by managers.  The
paper assesses the limitations in how governments currently apply performance
budgeting and suggests ways that it might be made more effective.  First, performance measures must be individually
tractable and simple, as well as be coherent and revealing in the context of
other program performance targets.  In addition, performance budgeting must distinguish between
program needs based on environmental changes and those based on management
related decisions.  Finally, the
paper argues that multi-task, complex-goal programs
will typically result in low-powered incentives for program managers.  This outcome results because, even apart
from information obstacles, program managers will be rewarded or punished on only
a component of the program, representing a small fraction of the total program
performance when performance measures as increase.  A partial solution is to ensure that the number of policy
instruments is not smaller than the number of targets.”   


Click here to read the Kasdin paper.