Journalist's Toolbox Update: July 3, 2009

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Palin Resignation Coverage: Find background resources and links on Sarah Palin in the Elections/Politics section.

July 4 Safety: Fireworks safety and other resources in the Public Safety and Holidays sections.

Recent Updates: Economic Crisis, Military Links, Investigative, Public Safety and Environment.

State Budget Crises: July 1 marked the start of the fiscal year for state governments and several, including California, Pennsylvania and Illinois, have serious shortfalls. Find resources in the State Government and Economic Crisis sections.

YouTube Reporters Center: YouTube recently launched a great tool for journalists. The Reporters Center offers tips and advice targeted to citizen journalists, but the resources are helpful to student and professional journalists as well. The site launched with a great video from Politifact, the Pulitzer-winning site from the St. Petersburg Times. The video covered fact-checking basics for reporters and editors, with warnings about using Wikipedia.

Michael Jackson's Death: Find resources for covering the death of pop star Michael Jackson in the Entertainment-Music and Daily News sections.

Search Tools: Veesual is a search system that helps users visualize the Web site's screenshot previews before you click it so you don't have to access a link to figure out that it's a "not found page." Works well with mobile, too. MSN's Bing produces some solid search results that you won't find on other search engines. Also, Wolfram is a new search tool that lets you enter your question or calculation, and it uses its built-in algorithms and growing collection of data to compute the answer. It's based on a new kind of knowledge-based computing. It's still in beta mode, but it looks promising.

Social Media Tips for Journalists: Run by journalists from the Chicago Tribune and Austin American-Statesman, Old Media New Tricks offers hands-on advice from many in media who are using social networking and Web 2.0 tools such as Facebook, Twitter, Digg, etc. The site also offers great blogging tips. Scott Kleinberg of the RedEye in Chicago blogs about the iPhone as well as social networking. Scott has mentioned three great tools for tracking Twitter and other social media tools: Tinker.com allows you to track a specific keyword on Twitter to see what the leading topics are at that moment. Trendrr.com lets you track trends on Twitter, Facebook, blogs, video, downloads and more. Spokeo.com is a great tool. It lets you search 43 social networking sites to see what your friends are posting and doing. It will even search your e-mail address book (with your permission) to find people. Registration is free on all sites.

Helpful Twitter Tools: ConvoTrack is a great new tool for tracking how social media is referencing a Web site. You can see what people on Twitter, Reddit, Digg and other online media are saying about your site. BackTweets.com helps track references to your site as well. JournoTwit works somewhat like TweetDeck, but is Web-based. It stores all your settings, and your last-read tweet, remotely, allowing you to move from machine to machine to mobile seamlessly, or simultaneously. It supports multiple logins for as many accounts as you like. It splits your feed up into managable columns, so you can choose to take in what you want, when you have time. It allows you to prioritize some people, and drown out others.

Add Twitter Tools:Mashable has assembled a comprehensive Twitter Guidebook. Ever wonder who's following you on your Twitter feed, and if you're not following them? Friend or Follow can help you find the answer. Tweetake lets you back up your followers and people you are following. Topify sends you an e-mail notification that someone is following you on Twitter. It includes information about that person (how many followers, updates, etc.)

All for Good: Google launched a community service search engine called All for Good. The site allows you to connect through Facebook and other social media sites, and it tailors the home page to volunteer opportunities in your area.

Weather Resources: Cover the severe weather this summer with the Toolbox's Weather section, which features several resources on tornadoes, hurricanes and other storms.

Global Journalism: TheMajlis.org is a new site that serves as a clearinghouse for "unbiased Middle East news, analysis and commentary in an age when traditional journalism is shrinking and Americans are missing out on news from the region ... discussion of current events in the Middle East, delivered in a frank and non-partisan fashion."

Military: MaptheFallen enables the user to pinpoint where, when and how each service member died since the beginning of the war in Afghanistan. A line connects the service member's approximate location of death to his or her hometown. You can download the map off of this blog.

Gas Prices: You can track increasing prices this spring and summer with several Toolbox resources. Mapquest has a page to track gas prices in your area. Zillow.com gives estimates on individual home values. Use resources in the Toolbox's Business Resources section to track the housing market , gas prices, food costs and other economic issues. Related Resources: Personal Finance and Labor sections.

Copy Editing: Jessica Ernst, one of my news editing students at DePaul University, suggested a great resource site for writing headlines. Thsrs: The Shorter Thesaurus gives you synonyms the same length or shorter than the word you enter. This helps if you can't think of a concise word to use on a tight headline count. Also, Forbes Investopedia is a great dictionary of business terms, articles, tutorials, calculators and other helpful tools. Related Resources: Copy Editing and General Resources.

Swine Flu: The Medical/Health section has several helpful resources, including the World Health Organization Disease Outbreak News Center, CDC Travel Notices Page, HealthMap Global Disease Alert Map and the Medical Symptoms Database Swine Flu Symptoms page.

The Economy: BankTracker, from MSNBC and American University School of Communication, is a new site that reviews bank statements and tracks trends in the constantly changing banking industry. Kiplinger.com has posted a helpful image-map and database that helps you research how the stimulus package affects your state. It's great quick-reference for looking up what projects are scheduled to receive stimulus money. Also, Read the Stimulus offers tips on how to interpret the stimulus package. Related Resources: Economic Crisis section.

Obituaries: Use links in the General Resources section to search for obituaries. Obituaries Help allows access to newspaper obituaries and helps you track your genealogy online. Search newspaper obits and download free genealogy forms and printable family tree charts.

Stock Markets: Use tools in the Business Resources section to track the daily changes in the markets.

News Industry Blogs: We have updated the Journalism Blogs page with several new resources.

Military: Troopspace.net is a social networking forum geared toward U.S. troops, families and anyone looking for military connections. The site can be helpful for networking and finding personal/family-generated stories in your area. Ancestry.com: Military Records offers thousands of records, old newsreels, etc. You can search by war, era or follow a timeline of events to find the information.

Iraq: PBS Frontline has an excellent background piece, Private Companies That Make America's War in Iraq Run. Also find several new resources in the Iraq and Military sections.

Writing With Numbers: SensibleUnits.com converts measurements, distances, weights, etc. into objects to which a reader can relate. Weird Converter is great for analyzing numbers and coming up with odd facts and figures for stories. It's great for comparing sizes, weights and gives the reader some perspective. Find more resources in the Toolbox's Writing With Numbers section.

Covering People With Disabilities: You'll find hundreds of resources on the Disabilities page.

Free Speech/First Amendment: We've added several new resources to the Free Speech/First Amendment page.

Jobs: The Toolbox's Jobs section features dozens of journalism job databases and search resources. They're organized by news, sports, photography, PR, etc.

Just for Fun: Check out the Cool Sites page for funny, offbeat web tools. The Strange News archive shows that fact truly is stranger than fiction.
Chuck Shepherd's News of the Weird blog also has offbeat news stories.

Teaching Tools: Many of you who use this site train your newsrooms and classrooms how to do online research: College Media, High School Journalism, Design, Broadcast Journalism, Ethics, Writing, Reporting Tools, Writing with Numbers, Photojournalism and Copy Editing.

Reporting Tools: Reporting Tools, Phone/E-Mail/Maps Directories, Search Engines, Expert Sources, Investigative, Form 990s, Public Records, Ethics, Check Domain Names, General Research and Writing With Numbers.

Editing and Fact-Checking Resources: The Toolbox's Copy Editing page has several new resources. The American Copy Editors Society has assembled a collection of 49 online quizzes about everything from AP Style and usage to Iraq and the Middle East. Related Resources: Copy Editing, General Research, History, Domain Sites and Writing With Numbers.

Writing with Statistics: Test your skills with IRE's interactive math quiz. After you've taken the test, click on the link at the bottom of the page to find out how to arrive at the correct answers. You'll find more resources like this one on the Writing with Numbers page. Related Resources: Spreadsheets, Business Resources, Personal Finance and Federal Government: Census Data.

Student Resources: College and high school students will find many helpful Toolbox resources for researching papers, reporting and more: Reporting Tools, Public Records, History, Ethics and Copy Editing.