This seems to be the best tool we've seen to track individuals who may be unaccounted for following Katrina.

Lycos: Katrina Missing Persons Site http://www.lycos.com/katrina/
With multiple small databases of survivors, we desperately needed one search engine that would search through all of them, and Lycos created one.  The site lists all the databases it searches through. If you're aware of others, please fill out Lycos' form to add them.

Ford Fessenden, of the NYTimes, has yet another strong piece in Thursday's paper, “Health Mystery in New York: Heart Disease.”  The lede lays out the perplexing problem in NYC: “Death rates from heart disease in New York City and its suburbs are
among the highest recorded in the country, and no one quite knows why.”

But among possible answers — and here especially is where the AJ kicks in — is that there is some “…speculation that doctors in the area may lump deaths with more subtle
causes into the heart disease category, making that toll look worse
than it actually is.”  And “…the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, at the health
department's request, has sent specialists to determine whether doctors
in New York City ascribe causes of death substantially differently.”


I know, I know, we're preaching here, but we don't think it can be pointed out too often: journalists and all social scientists cannot simply accept given numbers as a true, valid, honest.  We always have to swim up the data-creation stream to determine where, why and from who came the numbers. 

Tamara Thompson reports on her blog PI News Link….

“~ more government employees may be removed from public records ~

By Tamara Thompson Investigations

As Anna-Maria Mende reports from journalism.co.uk:

“US: News sites playing with Google Maps

By Anna-Maria Mende

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).“