Search for presidential campaign audio or video at Campaignsearch.com. "CampaignSearch.com has gathered campaign-related video and audio files from a number of Web sites: George Bush's and John Kerry's campaign Web sites, C-SPAN, PBS, NPR and more," the site says. CampaignSearch.com uses complex spoken-language-analysis ... to automatically identify the sections of audio/video news and speeches that are relevant to a voter's interests."

At Careerjournal.com you can search for average salaries by job title or location. For example, it says the average reporter in Kentucky earns $37,699. The average newspaper editor earns $60,121. You tell me if that's accurate ...

"The IRE and NICAR Database Library has just updated its Nuclear Material Events Database (NMED). The Nuclear Material Events Database contains records of incidents involving radioactive material licensed under U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) regulations. Included are medical events, events involving the use of radioactive byproduct materials, non-commercial power reactor incidents, and more."

Here's a collection of resources on prescription drug pricing.

USA Today used assisted living facility inspection data from seven states, including Indiana, to find that “staff shortages and insufficient training place elderly residents at risk with inadequate care, delayed diagnosis and treatment and even death," as reported in The Scoop.

Every year the Defense Department puts online a downloadable database of military contractors. It includes the contractor's name, city, state, amount and much more.

Research shows that most Web searchers never look beyond the first few pages of search results. Some search engines, such as Google, allow you to change the number of results returned per page. I've just bumped my Google preferences so Google returns 100 results per page, which results in less clicking to review them. This tip is courtesy of search guru Mary Ellen Bates.

IRE/NICAR has updated its OSHA inspection workplace database, "consisting of all federal inspections at companies in the U.S. and its territories between January 1972 into February 2004. It includes details of each Occupational Safety and Health Administration inspection during that time, including violations, accidents and penalties. It also gives names of the employers, accident victims, the degree of injury and any hazardous materials involved." You will recall that The Courier-Journalist lost the Pulitzer Prize in Public Service to The New York Times' OSHA series, which made heavy use of this database. (Although I believe the NYT obtained the database on its own, not through IRE/NICAR).

You can search U.S. Tax Court dockets online. The records go back to 1986. Search by docket number, individual party name or corporate name. The D.C.-based court is where individuals and companies go to settle tax disputes, including disputes about estate taxes, gift taxes, excise taxes, pension plans and IRAs. "Journalists should always check tax court when backgrounding individuals and corporations," The Investigative Reporter's Handbook says.

AAA has a fuel cost calculator to help you figure out just how much more that hydrocarbon slurping SUV is costing you these days.

The truth about cicadas can be found at Cicadaville. Misleading reporting in the mass media may have obscured the fact that cicadas are "vicious killers" that "prey on innocent children and pets." The latter seems self-evidently true, especially if you have a dog that's feasted recently on red-eyed carcasses.

The Online Journalism Review hosted a discussion by "blogologists" of how blogs are changing the academy, politics and journalism.

The federal government has improved its science search site, Science.gov, in ways it says will make it easier to find relevant information on the 47 million pages it indexes.

A research company reports that 83 percent of newspaper and TV station Web sites make a profit, with average margins of nearly 60 percent.

Look here if you're interested in the State of the News Media 2004. By the Project for Excellence in Journalism, "it is an inaugural effort to provide a comprehensive look each year at the state of American journalism. Our goal is to put in one place as much original and aggregated data as possible about each of the major journalism sectors."

NationMaster.com is " a massive central data source and a handy way to graphically compare nations. ... you can generate maps and graphs with ease on all kinds of statistics. What's more, you can select exactly which countries you want to include."

The National Institute of Standards and Technology has a list of its 74 free online databases covering science, law enforcement, the environment and more.

FOLDOC is the "Free, On-line Dictionary of Computing." There's also BABEL, "A Glossary of Computer Oriented Abbreviations and Acronyms." I learned about them via the Dictionary of Algorithms and Data Structures, which I can guarantee you are unlikely to ever need in your day-to-day work as a journalist, unlike the other two, which could be of some use someday.

The National Labor Relations Board has a detailed FOIA manual.

The Political Database of the Americas "is a non-governmental Internet-based project that provides reference materials, primary documents, comparative studies and statistical data for countries in the Western Hemisphere."

The University of Michigan Documents Center is compiling online materials about the Iraq prison abuse scandal.

FlatRateInfo has added a new feature called Ifone: "The NEW iPhones database contains over 150 million consumer-initiated telephone numbers. This database also contains over 10 million primary and 16 million secondary addresses not found in directories and over 40 million non-white page sourced telephone listings." I'll leave it up to you to figure out what a consumer-initiated telephone number is.

IRE/NICAR has updated its National Practitioner Data Bank database. It includes more than 340,000 records on medical malpractice payments, licensing problems, adverse DEA reports and more for doctors, dentists and other licensed health care professionals. IRE/NICAR sells databases to journalists for a fee.

I've mentioned ohMYNews before: It's a hugely popular Korean Web site that enlists average citizens as reporters. It now has an English version. I bring it up again because ohMYNews is a new model for journalism made possible by the Internet. Here is the original manifesto from the founder of ohMYNews, and as you read it, ask yourself if Korean society is so much different than our own:

"Born in the spring of the new millennium, OhmyNews declares it is making a complete departure from the media culture of the 20th century. We are going to change the culture of how news is produced, distributed, and consumed, all at one time.

Every citizen's a reporter. Journalists aren't some exotic species, they're everyone who seeks to take new developments, put them into writing, and share them with others.

This common truth has been trampled on in a culture where being a reporter is seen as something of a privilege to be enjoyed. Privileged reporters come together to form massive news media wielded power over the whole process of news production, distribution, and consumption.

The seriousness of the problem is that the massive media power is the final gutter of Korean capitalist society. There is a lot about those media that is dirty, and yet they have packaged themselves as clean and acted self-righteous towards the rest of society.

... Technology has been developing at nonstop pace, the world has changed, and readers have changed. What was even more of an unsettling was that it was none other than these massive gutters that were reacting to these changes with the most agility.

We therefore stand up to them raising high the flag of guerrilla warfare. Our weapon is the proposition that "every citizen is a reporter."

...

We have three main tactics.

• Abolish the threshold to being a reporter.
• Break down the set formula for news articles.
• Demolish all walls that separate media."

 

NICAR geeks have been pushing something called Social Network Analysis as the next big thing in computer-assisted reporting. SNA, for short, uses statistical methods to understand how human beings relate to each other. (For academic explanations, see here, here, here and here. You can also find tipsheets for journalists at IRE.) I've had a hard time seeing how it could be useful for day-to-day reporting, except in rare cases, but The Washington Post this weekend had a series on George Bush's network of campaign contributors that appears to have made use of it. One interesting feature is this graphic of Bush's "Spheres of Influence." A co-author is Sarah Cohen, who has led NICAR sessions on Social Network Analysis.

Another example of how it is being used is this online database, trackingthethreat.com, which uses Social Network Analysis to understand terrorism.

IRE has a new book out called "Interviewing the Interviewers." From the site: " ... some of the most renowned interviewers in investigative journalism share their experiences, techniques and advice. The book includes chapters on dealing with sensitive issues, cross-cultural interviewing, confrontational interviews, handling whistleblowers, technical interviews and finding and cultivating sources. Each chapter includes 'Tips from the Pros,' with specific, time-tested techniques. The book also includes a list of tipsheets and tapes taken from IRE conferences to provide additional help." It's $12 for members and $18 for nonmembers.

The Boston Globe used an on-the-spot survey of gay and lesbian couples getting marriage licenses to understand more about who they are. The lede of the story: "Two-thirds of the gays who applied for marriage licenses yesterday were women, half of the couples had been together for at least a decade, and an enormous majority were Massachusetts residents, a Globe survey of 752 couples in 11 cities and towns found."

The Diseases Database "is a cross-referenced index of human disease, medications, symptoms, signs, abnormal investigation findings" and so on.

Find Health News claims to use a "revoluationary" feature called "LookAhead" to help you narrow your search for health news.

You can find the Uniform Code of Military Justice here.

IT Learning Materials, a site for educators, teachers and students, offers lots of links to computer training materials, including for Microsoft Word, Access and Excel.

A basic rule of good Internet searching is to never rely on a single search engine: Thumbshots gives you a visual way to compare the results of searches on different sites. It produces a graphic that shows you at a glance how closely results of the same search match - or don't match.

I know, I know, it's an oxymoron: This site is devoted to legal ethics.

IRE/NICAR has updated its FAA Airmen Directory Database."The FAA Airmen Directory is a listing of pilots and other airmen and their certified ratings. Non-pilot airmen include mechanics, repairmen, parachute riggers, ground instructors, dispatchers, flight navigators and flight engineers. This data, current as of April 2004, includes 988,867 airmen." IRE/NICAR sells these databases to journalists.

The Department of Defense Almanac provides "a variety of information and statistical material about the Department of Defense - its people, organization, equipment, and funding." Maybe Rumsfeld should look here for the Abu Ghraib chain of command.

Chris Poynter points out this online database where you can search for all historical markers in Kentucky.

You are a dinosaur: The Boston Globe reports that some bloggers will be getting credentials to cover the Democratic National Convention.

Here's a page devoted to online sports resources.

Read Print is a free online library offering fiction and non-fiction classics from The Origin of Species to Pride and Prejudice.

You can find lots of information about any county in the U.S. at the National Association of Counties.

Newsmap takes Google's news page and turns it into a "treemap." The goal is "to divide information into quickly recognizable bands which, when presented together, reveal underlying patterns in news reporting across cultures and within news segments in constant change around the globe. ... It's objective is to simply demonstrate visually the relationships between data and the unseen patterns in news media."

The New York Times had an interesting article on European researchers who "demonstrated computer-based techniques that can identify blacked-out words and phrases in confidential documents."

Poynter's Al Tompkins suggests ways to provide "smarter crime coverage."

The non-profit Identity Theft Resource Center says it is dedicated to "helping people prevent and recover from identity theft."

Here's a good page on basic math for journalists.

MedlinePlus is one of the best sources of reliable health information. It offers an 8-minute tour on how to get the most out of your research.

Some useful sites on the military:

• An official accounting of war casualties from the Revolutionary War to the present.
• A very detailed list, compiled by a librarian, of places online where you can find "military stuff."
• A Navy page devoted to "Navigating the Military Internet."
• The Military Family Resource Center offers lots of data on the spouses and children of soldiers.
• Purdue's Military Family Research Institute is another source for insight into the domestic side of warrior life.
  

The St. Paul Pioneer Press used computer mapping and databases to report on crime enforcement in a drug-ridden neighborhood.

Masters of Cinema says it is all about "collating & disseminating film & DVD information for discerning cineastes the world over." "Discerning cineastes," by the way, is another way to say "movie snobs."

Access|Middle East offers "over 400 news sources automatically monitored and translated." The site says "Access|Middle East meets journalists’need for immediacy, attributable sources and factual information by providing context to the events as they break in the Middle East. While we and our founders are supporters of Israel, we believe that accurate information leads to a perspective that is supported by the facts and that in the final analysis objective reporting is in everyone’s best interest."

Here's what the Geneva Convention says about how prisoners of war should be treated.

If you are really looking forward to the next bug infestation, you'll want to check out the Periodical Cicada Page.

A new Web site is devoted to creating a free archive of clip art.

Religionwriters.com offers a searchable reference library.

Here's a list of principal FOIA contacts at federal agencies.

The AMG All Music Guide is "one of the most comprehensive, authoritative sources for music information on the web," SearchDay says. "The site designers took full advantage of the interactive capabilities of database technology. Just about everything in the All Music Guide database is massively cross-linked, allowing you to not only get full information about a particular artist but making it easy to simply click through for information on related artists, musical styles, instruments... the range of interlinked information is truly impressive."

Download.com has begun offering free music downloads.

The Guardian compares the efficiency of Google searches to using the telephone or a librarian. Short answer: Google isn't always the best choice.

Meat producers, who don't want to let their fellow flesh peddlers test every cow for mad cow disease, can turn to MeatNews.com, which has a meat-specific search engine, for their own self-serving view of the world.

U.S. Department of Agriculture offers a database of exporters and other international trade contacts.

You can get a copy of the now famous Army report on U.S. torture - er, abuse - of Iraqi prisoners at The Smoking Gun (PDF).

The Courier-Journal lost circulation for the six months ending in March compared to the same period a year ago - from 223,062 to 216,934. So did many other newspapers. That's strange, because the news conglomerates have been pouring so much money into hiring more reporters and producing better journalism. Oh, wait...

Billionaire investor Warren Buffett, who knows a cash cow worth milking, says the future of newspapers is bleak because advertising dollars are increasingly going elsewhere. Buffett is the owner of the Buffalo News and owns a big chunk of the Washington Post.

Remember you can use Google as a phone book. The best way is to type phonebook: in front of a name and city. For example, type phonebook: mark schaver, louisville. That gets you the name, address, phone number and links to maps of yours truly.

The Wellcome Trust Medical Photographic Library "is the world's leading source of images on the history of medicine, modern biomedical science and clinical medicine."

Country Indicators For Foreign Policy provides statistics on countries around the world.

Companies offering pension, health and welfare plans to employees must file what's called a form 5500 with the U.S. Labor Department. The forms report the assets, trustees, administrative costs and investments of the plans, and are intended to help spot financial problems or fraud. You can find search for them free online at freeERISA.com.

Textalyser will take any text you submit or a Web page and analyze it for complexity and readability. The CJ's home page scored a 6.1 for readability, meaning it was "easy."

"Forum Zilla helps web users find online forums for virtually any topic! "

Baseball Almanac boasts it "has MORE than 34,000 pages of baseball history, MORE than 80,000 fast facts, original research from recognized experts AND material not found or seen on any other web site in the world." I'm sure we can all agree it's a good thing we have this repository of information to recall the once-proud past of this dying sport...

The United Nations' FAOSTAT offers more than 3 million records on agriculture, including information on production, trade, land use, food quality, pesticides, machinery, exports and more.

One example is a database tells you how much of a particular pesticide is acceptable in your food. You'll be reassured to know that the UN says it's OK to have 8 mg/kg of malathion in a head of lettuce. The same page also can tell you how much drug residue is acceptable. The data can be downloaded in a format suitable for opening in a spreadsheet.

In the U.S., the Department of Agriculture's Economic Research Service offers detailed data on the outlook for cattle, hogs, broilers, milk, eggs and other farm products.

Courtesy of LLRX.com:

• Business filings available by state.
• Medicare resources.
• Facts about FOIA fees.

Atheists such as yours truly need this glossary of religious terms. Oddly, there's no entry for superstition.

The Center for American Progress has a new database "to chart conservatives' dishonesty. "In this database, each conservative quote will be matched against well-documented facts, so that users can get a more accurate picture of the issues," the site says. This obviously isn't non-partisan or balanced, as is FactCheck.org, reported here previously.