The Craft of Research

On November 10th, I’ll present just a brief lesson, as we and all the other Craft I classes will attend a special research presentation on backgrounding people using social networking sites, courtesy of the New York Times.  With that in mind, I’d like you to peruse some of the material below.

• ‘ESPN’s guidelines for social networking’ (Pro Football Talk)
• ‘Journalists’ Facebook Pages Reveal Struggle with Neutrality, Free Speech’ (Poynter)
• ‘Poynter, Newsrooms Develop Social Networking Policies for Journalists on Facebook, MySpace, Twitter’ (Poynter)
• ‘New York Times Policy on Facebook and Other Social Networking Sites’ (Poynter)
• ‘Reading, Writing and Reporters’ (The New York Times)
• ‘In Your Facebook’ (American Journalism Review)
• ‘Found in MySpace’ (American Journalism Review)
• ‘Reporters tap into social networks and find gold’ (Chicago Tribune)
• ‘Top friends are not sources’ (Daily Titan)

Speaking of November 10th, I want to remind you that’s also the deadline for APPROVED pitches on the research-inspired enterprise assignment.  That means you need to start pitching BEFORE 11/10.  I’ve yet to receive a pitch, and I’ll be out of town next week, which means I may not get back to you as quickly as I normally would.  Remember that NYC.gov is a treasure trove of possible ideas.  I just discovered another gem last week that’s not even on my handout.  Maybe you could uncover federal stimulus projects in your CD and compare them to other CDs?

Today’s bonus: David Montalvo, a.k.a. Mr. Millburn, has another winner on “The Local” blog for the New York Times.

Our next research session will be more of a discussion than a lecture, so please read the following stories before class on 10/20.

• Roxanne’s Nonexistent Revenge (original story here)
• A Cheatin’ Heart at 99.5 (original story here)

If you have time, I’d also like you to read the stories I assigned last semester.

Today’s bonus: An example of doing due diligence on Twitter. 

We have our first class byline of the semester, a Queens Courier story about the Frank Sinatra School of the Arts’ new home.  Congratulations…Canada breaks the ice!

More burning questions from recent days…

• Do you agree that these are the Top 25 Digital Influencers in News & Politics?
• Is this Newsweek writer correct when he opines that newspapers deserve to die?
• Will the focus “On Language” live on without William Safire? (R.I.P.)

Is Twitter really worth a billion bucks?

Is this what we should learn from the Mark Whicker debacle?

In light of the ACORN videos and their subsequent media coverage, does this Slate column make a good case for “activist” journalism?

On a related note, could Media Matters, despite some good points on fact-checking and the like, be more apoplectic about it? (And would they be if this weren’t “conservative” activism?)

Regarding the Google Book Search controversy, have you seen the New York Times topic page and the Open Book Alliance site?

Also on the topic of digital archives, will this joint effort take off?

Last but not least, did you know you’re already working for the Times? (See video below.)

If you’re looking for more on the Google Book Search brouhaha I mentioned in my “summer reading” post, I discovered a pretty thorough bibliography on the subject, going back to late 2003.

Or if you’re keeping tabs on the upcoming New York City elections, check this out.  Races from the mayor on down.

Today’s bonus: I’m expecting big things from this New York Times series on Toxic Waters.  It’s a great example of what I mean by “research-inspired enterprise.”  The Times web site also had some fine bells and whistles last week on the one-year anniversary of the financial crisis.

Don’t do what Mark Whicker did.  (The research was fine.  The column was awful.)

Today’s bonus: Here’s a good reaction to last week’s Michael Kinsley column on corrections.

This week, we used Nexis and Factiva for background research prior to reporting a story.

Are these databases also good for fact-checking your stories?

No, and here’s why.

Today’s bonus: One-stop shopping for news media errors.

Having received and reviewed your research prior to today’s “man on the street” interviews, I’ll quote one of my Craft teaching colleagues from the spring who must have used the same word at least a hundred times.

Focus.

What was the focus of your reporting assignment?  Was it troop deployment in Afghanistan?  Not specifically.  Was it the neighborhoods where you were doing your interviews?  No again.  That’s not to say background on either of those subjects would be useless to your story, but they shouldn’t have been the focus of your research.  You weren’t going to be interviewing President Obama or General McChrystal, nor writing neighborhood profiles.

Given that you were going to be interviewing average citizens, the focus of your research should have been on the opinion of the general populace regarding troops in Afghanistan.  There are always stories mentioning polls and surveys on this sort of hot button topic.  Armed with that information, you could then compare what you found in your interviews to what the general populace thinks.  Did you find a different vibe in your neighborhood?  You might even be able to ask people some good follow up questions, such as, “Would you be surprised if I told you x percent of the population thinks such and such?”

Kudos to those who e-mailed me yesterday asking for advice on how to tackle the research on this assignment.  I look forward to seeing how you incorporate your research into your work.

Today’s bonus: Since we’ll be talking about how to use social networking tools for research later this semester, I found this Times magazine article interesting.  Is the lure of Facebook wearing thin?

OK, I won’t bore you with a kiddie-style rundown of everything I did the last few months, but here’s some stuff I came across that may interest you…

Just this month, MSNBC acquired EveryBlock, a hyperlocal news aggregator you should definitely check out if you’re not already familiar with it. Also, several parties are challenging a settlement between Google Books and authors and publishers. And this week, I was happy to read that Wikipedia is getting stricter.

Earlier, I stumbled upon an interesting (albeit lengthy) web project about The Future of Journalism. Related to that, I largely agreed with this Columbia Journalism Review article, but found this Huffington Post piece utterly ridiculous.

Here’s a good 4-minute video on political fact-checking.

Twitter obsessed? Then check out The Ultimate List of Twitter Tools.

Speaking of Twitter, Editor & Publisher posted the Wall Street Journal’s rules for online conduct and Pro Football Talk did likewise with ESPN’s guidelines. In January, Poynter had posted the New York Times policy on social networking.

Speaking of the Times, an embarrassing snafu there last month showed the importance of fact-checking and research (more here, here and here). On the positive side, this New York City homicides map is pretty impressive and the paper continues to develop the Represent database of elected officials representing NYC addresses. Lastly, if you’re looking for Times-related laughs, did you read this article or see this segment from Comedy Central’s Daily Show?

Please read the articles below before class on 5/5.

• Woman Claiming to be a Victim of Katrina is Charged with Fraud (with editors note)
• Tracking the Fallout of (Another) Literary Fraud (with related stories to the left)
• Weeks After a Death, Twists in Some 9/11 Details