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Monday, August 30, 2004

New and interesting:
Florida Blog has moved to Flablog.net, with a neat new design.

Wonderful story in the Washington Post by Chalmers Roberts, the Washington Post's senior diplomatic correspondent in the 60s-70s, author of a history of the Post, on why he turned down open-heart surgery at age 93. He asks, what would he come home to, since his wife died three years ago. I was privileged to work with Roberts off and on between 1968-71, a delightful man.

Sunday, August 29, 2004

Opinion:
In the Miami Herald today, a column by Carl Hiaasen on the need to put a face on the Iraq dead:
A Marine spokesman in Camp LeJeune, N.C., told The Sun-Sentinel that he'd never heard of a relative of a dead soldier reacting the way Alex Arredondo's father did.
Yet there isn't a father alive who can't understand the depths of his grief.
By the end of this year, perhaps sooner, more than 1,000 American families will have received the same crushing news that was delivered last week to the Arredondos.
And it's news for all of us, despite the perfunctory and parenthetical way the media reports it. One dead soldier is still important.

And this from editorial cartoonist Jim Morin:

Weekend update: Other things found this week:
Yesterday's update was ready to post when a lightning strike knocked out our electricity for most of the afternoon. And this morning when I try connecting I get no dial tone, even though the phone line is working, and the PC diagnostics don't seem to detect any problem in the modem. Luckily the laptop still works so that will have to be the substitute for now. I was counting on this desktop doing the job for me a little while longer, but now will have to think about alternatives. Bummer.
Blogging has been slow this week and will continue so for awhile as everything else is fast happening in my life and big changes occuring. So this list is a bit shorter, but there's much more to come.

More links....

Reference :
  • Iraq Pipeline Watch from Inst. for Analysis of Global Security, has news about attacks, etc.
  • America's best colleges, 2005 from U.S. News and World Report.
  • Terrorism Resources: great links compiled by librarian at Air University at Maxwell AFB.
    Tools:
  • URL Info from Faganfinder, put in a URL and get lots of information about the Website.
    People:
  • People Search from Lycos, finds phone numbers/addresses.
    Statistics:
  • Poverty 2003: latest Census report.
  • Sourcebook of Criminal Justice Statistics: lastest edition has 2002 stats.
  • School District Finance Peer Search from Dept of Education, put in a school district and compare its finances to other comparable districts. (Latest data, from 2000-1)
  • GPO Green Book 2004 current data on U.S. social policy.
    Journalism:
  • City University's J-school will be in the old NY Herald Trib building. In the NY Times.
  • Fort Worth's new all-teaser front page
  • New York Newspaper Morgue Collection at UTexas. Did you know the New York Times doesn't have its clip files any more? They're here. Also morgues from the Herald Trib and several other papers. (From a NewsLib message.)
    News, Public Records, Florida, Business, Governments, Politics: no links this week.

    Some Interesting stories/Weblogs:
  • Operation Truth: "the truth about Iraq from those who served", organized by Jesse Ventura.
  • Want to see The letter Max Cleland tried to deliver? It's on the Kerry site.
  • Mother Jones on the dismantling of the health care system
  • What went wrong in Iraq, in Foreign Affairs.
  • Iraq the Model: very interesting blog from Iraq.
  • DCist: a new blog from/about DC.
  • Community Forum on recovering from Charley on News-Press Website.
  • Sky Box by Jay Rosen: the NYU prof is blogging for Knight Ridder on the convention.
  • NY Daily News report on dual voters: 50,000 New Yorkers also vote in Florida.
    Fun/Entertaining:
  • Birds Eye View of Washington DC: really fun map of the downtown area.
  • George Bush's War Medals.

  • Thursday, August 26, 2004

    Joining the ranks:
    The Miami Herald has created its first reporter-written blog, for news of the MTV Video Music Awards being held this weekend in Miami. For celebrity sitings, gossip, and color, check out I Want My VMA. I mean, after all, who doesn't want to know that Paris Hilton doesn't like raw fish?

    Wednesday, August 25, 2004

    In the news:
    Here's one of the saddest stories ever: A South Florida man, informed of his son's death in Iraq, burns a Marine van and himself. Some days the news is just too much to bear.

    The News-Press, in Fort Myers, Fl, is running a Community Forum on recovering from Charley. People are trying to contact missing friends, relatives online.


    Sky Box by Jay Rosen: the NYU prof, whose Pressthink blog is one of the most respected journalism blogs, will be blogging for Knight Ridder on the Republican National Convention.

    Saturday, August 21, 2004

    Weekend update: Other things found this week:
    I posted lots of useful and interesting hurricane links to my blog on Herald.com, and yesterday included links to state and county sites with relief/recovery information. With the storm and other things going on this is a larger compilation than usual as it covers two weeks of links.

    The links....

    Reference :
  • Frogs: A Chorus of Colors from American Museum of Natural History.
  • Birds, Birds, Birds from U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, includes a Bird Identification Center as well as lots more information.
  • Highway History from Federal Highway Administration. History of Interstate Highway System, and more.
  • Four things Yahoo can do that Google can't, by Tara Calashain.
  • The Very Best of British: an American's guide to speaking British.
  • Natural Hazard Statistics from NOAA.
  • Also from NOAA: Operational Event Imagery: high-res photos of hurricanes, tornadoes, dust storms, fires, etc.
  • Good hurricane reminder from Al Tompkins: Coastal Population Tool from NOAA calculates population along the coast. Example: Here's Manatee County: shows huge increase in population since the last (indirect category 2) storm hit 40 years ago.
  • Coral Reef Conservation Program from NOAA.
  • The Gulf of Tonkin Incident: flawed intelligence and the decision for war in Vietnam. New report from the National Security Archives.
  • Testing the Waters, 2004 NRDC on pollution at popular beaches. Here's the Florida Report.
  • World War I Document Archive at Brigham Young University.
  • American Council on Education Information Center: lots of factsheets and reports on education.
    Governments, Politics:
  • Political Party Fundraising, 2004 data from Federal Election Commission.
  • Silent Partners Center for Public Integrity's site on 527 political committees has a searchable database to track funding.
  • Vote! The Machinery of Democracy Smithsonian exhibit.
  • OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights: Elections monitoring: this international organization will be monitoring U.S. election this year.
  • Survey of State Firearm Sales Procedures from DoJ.
    Tools:
  • Gmail tweaks: if you've got Google Mail, here are some things you can make it do (like import all your mail from Outlook).
    People:
  • UK National Archives has migration records and 1901 Census to search, and images of important documents (Queen Victoria's Census return) among other things.
    News:
  • Darfur Humanitarian Emergency from U.S. AID. Has stats, news, and satellite photos of destroyed villages.
  • All Headline News: a Web-based news aggregator with a pull-down menu of lots and lots of categories. Here's Cuba news, e.g.. Also searchable or you can sign up for email alerts.
    Statistics:
  • 2004 World Population Reference Sheet from Population Reference Bureau.
  • Literacy rankings, 2004: Miami 37th, Hialeah 78th.
  • Grantmaker Stats from the Foundation Center.
  • Highway Fatality Rates, 2003 from NHTSA.
    Journalism:
  • Crisis Journalism: a handbook from American Press Institute.
  • Tips and Tools for journalists covering trauma, from Dart Center.
    Florida:
  • Miami-Dade Candidate financial reports from a service called precinctfind.com.
  • Florida's Historical Hurricanes from FIU's International Hurricane Center.
  • Mr. Miami Beach: a PBS special on Carl Fisher.
    Business:
  • The Business of Baseball with lots of databases and a blog for latest news.
    Public Records: no links this week.

    Some Interesting stories/Weblogs:
  • Starbucks Gossip: a blog about 'America's leading drug dealer' by Jim Romenesko.
  • J.D. Lasica posts a great list of videoblogs.
  • Blogitics: interesting blog on Bush administration.
    Fun/Entertaining:
  • Alabama Mailroom Veterans for Bush (via South Knox Bubba).
  • Could this be the best menu in the world? More about Shopsins

  • Wednesday, August 18, 2004

    How they covered it:
    Nice collection of Hurricane Charley front pages on the NewsDesigner blog.

    Monday, August 16, 2004

    Hurricane damage: Overturned trees at Turnpike service area about 30 miles south of Orlando. Posted by Hello

    After the storm:
    Yesterday we drove the length of the Florida Turnpike and up I-75. About 35 miles south of Orlando we began seeing hurricane damage, which continued through the city area, but not much past it.
    This whole Charley thing has been incredibly depressing, bringing back memories of Andrew. I heard a couple complaining in the Turnpike service area because they didn't have any ice. I wanted to say: Try living without ice, electricity, phone for two weeks -- or more.
    There are housing developments on one side of the Turnpike with terrible roof and porch damage, while developments on the other side have little or no damage. Goes to show how erratic building is in Florida.
    We passed lots of convoys of bucket trucks from all over (just as Jeb said there would be). Made us remember those crews from Raleigh that finally got our electricity turned on 11 days after Andrew. And the tree service trucks heading south reminded us of the crews from Ohio that helped us get the mess out of our neighborhood. Thanks again, guys.
    We also saw lots of campers heading south: people looking for construction/roofing jobs? And truckloads of huge generators, as well as several Army convoys.
    Amazing to see Americans mobilizing in a disaster. Let's hope those poor folks in Port Charlotte and Punta Gorda get through this quickly.

    Saturday, August 14, 2004

    More storm blogs:
    Weatherblog is following the storm as it moves north.
    Doc Searls has found several more storm bloggers.
    Command Post is linking to lots of storm news.
    Side Salad, from Tampa, has lots of information and pictures, as the remnants of the storm are still affecting the weather there.
    Buzzmodo, in Winter Park.
    Backcountry Conservative is covering the storm from South Carolina.

    And, more storm resources:
    IRE/NICAR has again compiled a great list of breaking news resources for analysing effect of the hurricane.

    Blogging war:
    I didn't know the folks at Lunaville.org, creators of the Iraq Coalition Casualty Count, had a blog. This should be good.

    Blogging the storm:
    I'm posting these on my Herald blog, but for those who don't want to register, here are some of the blogs covering Hurricane Charley I've found so far:
    A meteorologist for the Internet weather service Weatherbug blogged from Fort Myers, but with power and cellphone outages is looking for a place to post from, and to upload photos. He had photos leading up to the storm.
    Hatcher's Hack, from Sarasota, is also writing on the storm.
    Andiamo, log of a ship in Key West right now, has photos from the storm.
    TBO.com is also blogging the latest news from Tampa.
    Florida Blog has found some people blogging from the storm too.
    BBC News is getting direct reports from people in the path of the storm.
    The St. Petersburg Times's President has an online hurricane journal.
    Candie in Lehigh Acres blogs about the storm, and her father is posting photos and video at The Goodyear family blog.
    Stories from the storm are being collected by the St. Petersburg Times here and here. They're also collecting Readers' photos.
    Orlando Sentinel storm blog.

    Friday, August 13, 2004

    On the edge of the storm:
    I've been posting to the Herald blog most of the day. We are hustling in Miami as we watch the middle of the state go through the worst. Looks like the Florida papers in the path are doing a great job. A few people blogging the storm, too.

    Thursday, August 12, 2004

    Interesting blogs and blog news today:
  • Breaking News Blog on NJ.com is covering the Governor's resignation and reaction. (via Jeff Jarvis)
  • Weatherbug storm blog: Weatherbug employee is blogging Hurricane Charley from SW Fla., with photos.
  • Does anyone know what the first newspaper blog was? Part of Charlotte Observer's coverage of Hurricane Bonnie in 1998.
  • Transparency and Trust in the blogosphere by J.D. Lasica in OJR on why people trust bloggers.
  • My War: Fear and Loathing in Iraq: An amazing blog from a soldier on the front lines (can you call it that there?) (via JD Lasica)

  • Hurricane help:
    As usual, Poynter's David Shedden has put together a great list of Hurricane links. Of course, Storm.herald.com is the place to go.

    Wednesday, August 11, 2004

    More on that conversation:
    If you haven't read any of the letters to Poynter that resulted from my Sunday Herald column, it's worth a look. Some interesting stuff coming out there.
    The first sally was from Dan Mitchell, who asked if anyone could give him an example of any blog breaking a news story, and said:
      ...But blogging generally is in no way a replacement for reportage. If
      bloggers somehow were able to have the time, money, and resources it would take to do real journalism, I would welcome it.
      ...Do 'the people" have the resources of the Washington Post? Do they have the Graham family's money and lawyers on their side? Do they have the wisdom and experience of someone like Ben Bradlee supporting them? Do they have a battery of editors questioning their work at every turn, making sure they get it right? Do they have the ability to spend 10 hours a day over many months doing nothing but working on a single story? And even if they have all that, do they have the hard-won reputation of an outfit like the Washington Post behind their story, so that when it's published, it's believed by most of the people who read it?


    Several letter writers answer with good examples of news that's been broken in blogs or other Websites.
    But the best letter so far, I think, is in this one from Michael Cader, who says:
      I usually stay away from the endless blog vs. journalism discussions because while "traditional" journalists like to argue about whether or not blogs matter, out there in the real world blogs grow and gain influence among readers who don't really care about the fine points of such arguments.
      ...Working journalists can tell each other whatever stories they like about how blogs don't matter, and don't merit their attention. And sure, there are a lot of blogs that are mostly personal expression or venues for opinion. There are even plenty of blogs that mostly aggregate and comment on reports from elsewhere -- just as there are plenty of newspapers that mostly rip copy from the wires and print press releases!

    I'm so glad to see this discussion moving along. I'm one who doesn't bother to read most of the stories about journalism and blogging, because it's like political opinion these days: you're on one side or the other. But I do agree with both these gentlemen.
    There's no question newspapers do great journalism, in fact that was one of my points. But where do they get their information? 'Woodstein' got a lot of it by spending hours cajoling information from scared secretaries. What if those secretaries had their own blogs, or told a friend with a blog? What if the reporter got a tip that the information was already out there? How much faster would it get in the papers?
    I used that 'the people' cliche for a reason....because it's all of us that make the news and bring it to light. The media organization that encourages those that know the story to tell it is the one that will succeed. And that's exactly what Bob and Carl did in 1972. And it was the Post that let them do that.

    Hurricane news:
    Here we are again. Happy Florida summer. At least maybe the hurricanes will blow all the mosquitoes away. The half-dozen spraying flights over my house every night haven't been making a dent in the little nasties. Worst in the 24 years I've been here, and of course we've got West Nile too.
    Anyway, here's a wonderful thing to help reporters cover the storms better: National Hurricane Center RSS feeds. Excellent!

    Media news:
    Dan Gillmor is interviewed about his book We the Media, in WIRED: We're all journalists now.
    More tomorrow, I hope. Busy week.

    Tuesday, August 10, 2004

    A conversation!
    Someone wrote a letter to Poynter asking for examples of bloggers who have broken news stories. I didn't have room in my story about Nixon's resignation to list examples, although I pointed to Dan Gillmor's book where there are plenty. But Romenesko readers have already jumped in and posted several examples to Poynter's Letters page.

    Monday, August 09, 2004

    Researcher blogger in encyclopedia:
    Jessica Baumgart points out that there's a Wikipedia entry on Gary Price with a nice photo by Alice Pepper of the Free Press.

    Wow
    I'm on Romenesko today Wow.

    Sunday, August 08, 2004

    30 years ago today:
    And I'm writing about what that day was like at the Post, and what I think about journalism now.

    And I still have it after all these years: Posted by Hello

    Saturday, August 07, 2004

    Weekend update: Other things found this week:
    Lots and lots of new stuff this week. More was linked on my Herald blog.
    I'm thinking about 1974 this week, as Monday is the 30th anniversary of Nixon's resignation. My memory of the day before is running in the Issues section of The Herald tomorrow. I'll link then. I also posted Watergate research inks on the other blog on Monday.
    One other thing I found interesting this week: Harry Rosenfeld talks about Watergate (he was metro editor at the Post at time of the break-in, and later was national editor (my boss), replacing the late, great Richard Harwood who was there at time of Nixon resignation.)

    More links....

    Reference :
  • Rank Insignia of the World
  • World Audit: ranks countries. Shows the U.S. as 9th in freedom, 12th in democracy.
  • The Source Book of Multicultural Experts
  • New address for Zimmerman's Research Guide, a great list of legal and other resources hosted by LexisNexis.
  • NEA Almanac of Higher Education, 2004
  • Movie Review Query Engine finds reviews of over 40,000 movies.
  • World Hunger Map from World Food Programme. Click on map to get info about a country's situation: here's Cuba.
    Governments, Politics:
  • 270 to Win: site devoted to electoral college, has an interactive map showing projections.
  • ConventionBloggers for the RNC: ready to go.
  • List of gifts given to G W Bush (and other federal employees); from Federal Register (via Dan Froomkin, Wash Post).
  • ZFacts A site for journalists on politics and economic policy from economist Steve Stoft.
  • Cuba After Castro: new study from RAND Corporation.
  • Iraq Veterans Against the War.
    Tools:
  • Yahoo! Local finds businesses & services in a local area. Search by address, ZIP, city/state, etc. Here's Newspapers in Miami.
  • IceRocket "Every search is a direct hit"; new search engine from Mark Cuban. Unusual feature: shows an image of the Web page before you click.
  • Newspaper publishers will hate this: but if you're using Mozilla's Firefox browser, a brand new extension you can install lets you right-click to find the BugMeNot password for a news Website. Very cool.
    People:
  • Research a lawyer from Findlaw, search by name or search for an attorney with particular experience. Note if you search by name the left-hand column will show litigation experience (but you must register).
  • Obituaries 101 links to obituary pages in newspapers nationwide.
    News:
  • The future of news? Newsmap from Newsisfree lets you see the news in graphical format. Moving mouse over a story brings up a description. You can 'Track' a story to see related stories. This is the Top News page but there are other categories. Note the main NewsisFree site has been redesigned so it much easier to use, too. Cyberjournalist points out some other similar experiments.
  • Toronto Star: Pages of the Past new online image archive of the paper is by subscription, but the entire year of 1945 is readable for free.
  • How to find Wall Street Journal articles in Google: Google News now provides access to select articles from the
    Wall Street Journal. To find Wall Street Journal articles, add
    "source:wall_street_journal__subscription_" to your keyword query. Note
    the double underscore between "journal" and "subscription," and the
    single underscore after "subscription." Articles indexed via Google
    News are available for free. (PaidContent.org, 2 August 2004)
    (via LLRX, but I couldn't make it work -- it asked for my subscription info).
    Statistics:
  • State estimates of substance use, 2002
  • The Foreign-Born Population of the U.S., 2003: new Census report.
  • UNESCO Institute for Statistics on education, science, technology, culture and communication.
    Journalism:
  • A Zeal for Secrets and A Skip through the Rabbit Hole by Pete Weitzel, on state of the public's Right to Know, in American Editor.

    Public Records, Florida, Business, no links this week.

    Some Interesting stories/Weblogs:
  • Dancing in the Streets: John Perry Barlow proposes guerrilla dancing in New York during the Republican convention.
  • How to be creative: good advice from artist/blogger Hugh MacLeod. Click on "Main" to go to the home page with many more thoughts on creativity. Check Number 8: "Companies that squelch creativity can no longer compete with companies that champion creativity."
  • Blog Africa.
  • Politech: blog on politics & technology.
  • Carl Hiaasen and the state of weirdness from CNN.
  • This would be a good blog name: Spastic Arm. (Tim Porter on some great quotes from Orville Schell.)
  • Wouldn't you know there'd be a Disney Blog?
  • The Truth Behind "Shove-itGate" from Philadelphia Weekly.

    Fun/Entertaining:
  • The Skeptiseum, 'the skeptical museum of the paranormal'.
  • Amazon.com's Butterfly Ballot: the joke continues.
  • Cuba Classics: photos of classic American cars in Cuba.

  • Friday, August 06, 2004

    Gillmor in HTML:
    A comment to my original posting notes that We the Media in HTML has the links list. Thanks Constantin Basturea.

    Lots and lots:
    It's an interesting week in journalism. So much talk about the Unity Conference, which is getting down to the nitty-gritty:

    A new group: International News Safety Institute has news and information on journalists killed, injured, safety issues, training.

    The future of news: Newsmap from Newsisfree lets you see the news in graphical format. Moving mouse over a story brings up a description. You can 'Track' a story to see related stories. This is the Top News page but there are other categories. Note the main NewsisFree site has been redesigned so it much easier to use, too. Cyberjournalist points out some other similar experiments.

    Wednesday, August 04, 2004

    Lunchtime diversion:
    I've just finished Dan Gillmor's new book, We The Media: Grassroots journalism by the people, for the people. Fascinating and a must read for any journalist. Link is to the book's Website; you can also download PDFs of the entire book. The book's notes contain a wonderful links list; I don't see them on the Website, though; they are in the PDFs but are not direct links. Might be worth converting to Word to make the links active (but, oops, didn't work for me).
    More of interest:
  • When you search Google News, what are you getting? Vin Crosbie studies the results.
  • My Beef with Big Media by Ted Turner, in Washington Monthly. Saw him talking about this with Charlie Rose last night....the man's a treasure.
  • George Bush's Blog from The Onion.
  • Joe Trippi's blog 'The Revolution Will Not be Televised' from his new book.
  • Political Wire: Taegan Goddard's blog has some interesting stuff, like this:
  • A call from the president: LBJ orders some slacks.

    Another thing:
    An email from Topix reminds me to mention the changes and redesign. These were all covered -- ably -- on Resourceshelf by Gary Price the other day, but I must say I am quite impressed. I loved the site before, think it's better now. Some fans are excited about the email alerts now available, but I love the RSS feeds which were already available. I really like the Live Feed in right hand column. There's also a Topix Blog to keep up with the changes.

    And, Douglas Fisher at Common Sense Journalism has discovered something researchers should be concerned about: Network Solutions is trying to hide personal information in WHOIS domain name records. This is important. We've used these records to locate local spammers or people who've fed bad information to USENET groups or blogs. WHOIS is an incredible tool for journalists, we can't lose it. Check this out.

  • Sunday, August 01, 2004

    In the news:
    In the Miami Herald today, David Kidwell reports that Florida's Secretary of State Glenda Hood and elections officials knew of problems with a felons database used to remove voters from the polls. And Lesley Clark writes about the extraordinary attention being given to Florida and the 2000 election results in this campaign.

    Also in The Herald: Georgia Tasker reports from Cuba on how new travel restrictions are curtailing scientific study of the environment there. It's one of a series of stories Tasker has reported from the island, accompanying by beautiful scenic photographs she took.