The Craft of Research

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.

A few weeks ago, a college basketball coach was fired and went on a rant about the mid-season termination providing no benefit.  I had a hunch he was right and wanted to go about proving it in an article.

The first thing I did was contact Gary K. Johnson at the N.C.A.A.–the organization’s stats expert–who sent me a list of all the coaching changes over the last 15 years, including those that happened during the season.

Then I needed to find out the circumstances behind those changes.  I was only interested in the ones where coaches were fired, or effectively fired by being forced to resign.  So I did a Nexis search on every one and discovered that of the dozen coaches who had been dismissed during the season over the past six years, not one of the immediate replacements succeeded and got the job permanently at the end of the season.

So I compiled a chart and here was the end result.

God bless experts!  God bless Nexis!

My name is Jack Styczynski and this is my fourth semester teaching research in Craft classes–my second with Rebecca Leung and first with David Lewis.  If you’re interested in my professional background, click here.  Personally, I’m a big New Orleans Saints fan (WHO DAT!) and a huge college hoop-head.

The primary purpose of this blog is to give you online access to my lesson material from class.  But you’ll also want to check in frequently for posts on my most recent research discoveries, such as the All Things Census blog, Databases and E-Journals from the New York State Library and the Listorious directory of Twitter accounts.

You’ll also see me spreading the love for some of your latest published work, such as that by Liza Eckert and Andrea Swalec this month, and Vishal Persaud, Jordan Shakeshaft and Erica Soto in December.

Welcome back, and see you soon!

This is the official research blog for Rebecca Leung’s Fall 2009 section of Craft I.  You’ll also find posts from the past when it served the same function for Craft sections taught by Steve Strasser and Tim Harper.  It’s the spot for research handouts, assignments, news, tips and whatever else comes up during the semester.

My name is Jack Styczynski and this is my second year as a Research Adjunct at the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism.  Pretty much everything you’d want to know about my career in the news media biz can be found here.

Personally, I love basketball, New Orleans and gospel music, both classic and contemporary. If you still need to know more, you can peep last year’s welcome message.

Check in often.  And welcome to the J-school!  Talk soon.

I’m not scheduled to be in class next Tuesday, but I will be around school to observe one of my research colleagues in action, so if you need to meet with me for anything, let me know.

I also plan to get your research exercises back to you this weekend, probably Sunday.

In the meantime, take 3 minutes to check out the video below. You’ll probably recognize someone.

MUSICIANS’ VILLAGE -NEW ORLEANS, LOUISIANA from Kefa Olang on Vimeo.

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.

Better late than never, congratulations to Kristen Joy Watts for a Law Times story on Toronto’s Fatboys in the New York City Marathon.

Michael Preston and Collin Orcutt also produced a video on high school baller Dominic Cheek.

Last but not least, Hoops Orcutt continues to stand by his Lakers prediction in his latest entry on the Men’s Fitness blog.

(Almost forgot, the teacher joined in the fun too!)

For the few who still haven’t received my review of your beat memo, I promise, I’m almost done.  By Sunday at the latest, I’ll finish them up and post a comprehensive recap of the whole review process on the blog.  If you have already received my comments and think I was a little rough, at least be encouraged that your classmates got pretty much the same treatment.  Even among the few “check-plus” folks, nobody was perfect.

While you wait for the recap, feel free to rake me over the coals a little.  I’m not above constructive criticism of my own work.

Erik Kelt and Jack Styczynski help rebuild in the Ninth Ward of New Orleans.

OK folks, I’m back from New Orleans and ready to tackle your beat memos.  I’ll start the grading process ASAP and try to get them back to you next week, but keep in mind I’ve got two sections to handle, so forgive me if it takes a little longer.

My latest research assignment earned me a credit in today’s paper that ties in perfectly with this week’s scheduled lesson on NYC.gov resources.  I’ll give you a demonstration of what I did in Tuesday’s class.