The Craft of Research

In case you hadn’t noticed, the Time Inc. publications—including People, Sports Illustrated and Time—recently disappeared from your Nexis and Factiva accounts.  This stems from an exclusivity contract Time Inc. inked with EBSCO earlier this year.  While the research community hoped the deal might still allow other aggregators to continue providing access to the publications, so far, no luck.  Apparently, EBSCO will soon be the only fee-based aggregator with the archives.  (According to Library Journal, Gale retains them through 2010.)  Nexis Senior Director of Licensing Dave Oakley hasn’t given up hope things will change, but it doesn’t look promising.

“We’ve left the door wide open, though at the moment talks are not continuing with EBSCO,” Oakley said last week in an e-mail exchange. “Given my understanding of the exclusive arrangement, any after-market licensing has to run through EBSCO.”

The true irony is that at least two research departments within the Time Inc. empire—and likely more—don’t subscribe to EBSCO.  That’s not to suggest those departments don’t have access to their own backfiles.  They do, through an internal database.  But what it does say is that Time Inc. seems to have no problem forcing everyone else to access its archives through an aggregator the company’s own researchers don’t consider worth a subscription—Nexis and Factiva users be damned. (more…)

First and foremost, a reminder about next week’s research clinics offered by the Research Center.  I highly recommend attending, especially the Facts on File session Tuesday at 12:30.  It will be worth your while, guaranteed.

Going back to last week’s lesson for a moment, I read an interesting article in the Weekly Standard about the Census Bureau’s “Orwellian American Community Survey.”

From the byline congratulations department, Danny Gold’s story about crime plaguing a senior citizens housing development in Brooklyn made City Limits.

As for my own work, if you heard me mention my “manual labor” during our break in class last week, I was talking about my trip to New Orleans last month.  Photos and a story are here.

Educational bonus: In case you missed it, Alan Schwarz of the New York Times did some great enterprise work last week.  Stories here, here, here and here.  Also, here is some stinky, but good, enterprise reporting from AM New York.

Fun bonus: The Film Forum is in the midst of showing a month’s worth of newspaper-related flicks.

On the New York City News Service, a package chronicling the recent Green Expo included contributions by Liza Eckert, Eugenia Miranda and Jordan Shakeshaft.

At NBC Local Integrated Media, Vishal Persaud noted that a vintage Nintendo package sold on eBay for $13,000.

Last but not least, Andrea Swalec has been busy at “The Local” for the New York Times with stories on vacant apartments and a long-delayed supermarket.

Congrats to all!

Today’s bonus: You may want to check out the links below from a recent faculty training presentation on limiting legal risk in journalism and avoiding plagiarism.

• Top 10 Rules for Limiting Legal Risk (from Knight Citizen News Network)
• Why Plagiarism Continues and What Writers, Editors Can Do About It (from Poynter Online)

Check out this incredible story from the Charlotte Observer.

• Google is testing a news-by-topic service.
• ProPublica has an Eye on the Stimulus page which includes a recovery tracker to find stimulus projects near you.

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.