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.

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 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?

What do you get when you combine our federal government lesson with our social networking lesson?

GovFresh!

…a live feed of official news from U.S. Government Twitter, YouTube, RSS, Facebook, Flickr accounts and more, all in one place.

I’ve now received a copy of the social networking tipsheet Barbara Gray promised us during her presentation last week.  Make sure to take a look.  Could easily be some quiz material on there.

Speaking of social networking, did you see the article on the virtues of Twitter in Tuesday’s Times?  Or conversely, how about the one in AM New York Wednesday that says Twitter can make you mean?

On April 7th, Barbara Gray, who put together the immigration handout, will give you the same social networking presentation she gives to New York Times reporters.  I’ll be “along for the ride,” but the research lesson that morning will be hers.  It looks like we may also have a special visitor.

In the meantime, I’d like you to read the Times policy on social networking as well as the social networking material I’ve posted to the blog since the fall.  Although I won’t be able to hold you accountable for reading any of it prior to the 7th, I can hold you accountable for it on the final quiz, so you may as well familiarize yourself with it now, when it makes sense.

Also, for a laugh, check out the Twitter video below!

Welcome to the official research blog for Steve Strasser’s section of Craft II, everyone.  (And for a couple of you, welcome back.)  I thought you might be interested in some stuff I read between semesters.

Poynter Online had a couple of good stories this week on journalists’ Facebook pages and developing ethics guidelines for journalists using social networking tools.  This is worthwhile follow-up material to some of the related readings I posted last semester.

There’s also some news about the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey.  The New York Times stories here and here explain it pretty well.  The upshot is, now you can get recent Census bureau stats for more and smaller communities (as small as 20,000 people) rather than having to go back to the year 2000 numbers.  We’ll talk more about it during a Census research lesson this semester.

Speaking of the New York Times, did you see this story in New York magazine?  With all the bad news about the journalism profession these days, it’s nice to have a little good news, at least for cybergeeks.

Oh yeah, about me?  As my colleagues at the Times and NBC will attest, I’m a bit of a geek myself.  And a hoop-head.  For more, here’s my welcome message from last semester.

Talk soon.

Remember the social networking readings I posted way back when?

Here’s another recent story, involving one of my employers.

We’ll kick it around when discussing people and backgrounding resources on 9/9.  In the meantime, here are some worthwhile readings…

• ‘Found in MySpace’ (American Journalism Review)
• ‘When reporters go into MySpace’ (News & Observer)
• ‘Reporters tap into social networks and find gold’ (Chicago Tribune)
• ‘Top friends are not sources’ (Daily Titan)