World Resources

Media, including TV, radio, newspapers, government contacts around the world

World Net Daily http://www.worldnetdaily.com/

World News from http://pandia.com/news/

Middle East Search Engines: http://www.searchenginewatch.com/links/

Regional_Search_Engines/Middle_East/index.html

World Search Engines by Region: http://www.searchenginewatch.com/links/Regional_Search_Engines/

Search Engines-broken down into 8 types: http://www.searchenginewatch.com/links/
News Search Engines: http://searchenginewatch.com/links/News_Search_Engines/Major_News_Search...

Translation tool: http://www.freetranslation.com

Translate Text: http://www.dictionary.com/translate/

Translator in many languages http://www.bablefish.com

Translator English to Arabic/Arabic to English http://tarjim.ajeeb.com/ajeeb/default.asp?lang=1

Arab News in English http://english.ajeeb.com/

Internet Radio Stations Worldwide: http://www.radiotower.com/

Terrorism and WTC/Pentagon Attacks

Southeast Asian Journalists Assoc: http://www.saja.org/roundupsept11.html#backlash

Gov’t and Military Contacts including State Department, Embassies worldwide, Forts and Military bases: http://www.poynter.org/terrorism/al9.htm

Military unit size-terms: http://www.leyden.com/gulfwar/word.html

What is Taliban and who is Bin Laden: http://www.poynter.org/terrorism/al8.htm

Making a War Plan for Your Newsroom: http://www.poynter.org/terrorism/jill9.htm

Planning for a trip to Pakistan? A How to: http://www.poynter.org/terrorism/al12.htm

Worldwide Weather: http://weatherbase.com/

Prepare for Bomb Threats: http://www.poynter.org/Terrorism/Al2.htm

Telling Victims Stories: http://www.poynter.org/terrorism/victims14.htm

Guidelines for Telling Victim Stories http://www.poynter.org/terrorism/guidelines14.htm

Accuracy and Arabs http://www.poynter.org/terrorism/aly1.htm

Embassies Worldwide – http://www.escapeartist.com/embassy1/embassy1.htm

Worldwide Government Links http://www.pimall.com/nais/l-foreigngov.html

World Gov’t on the Web; http://www.gksoft.com/govt/en/world.html

Worldwide Phone Directories: http://www.teldir.com/eng/

American and World Gov’t Databases: http://www.internets.com/sgovt.htm

Useful Search Tools for Journalists

1stHeadlines.com - one of the best journalism sites on the web. http://www.1stheadlines.com is a fast and easy to load site that summarizes the leading headlines for hundreds of newspapers and online news sites around the world.

RefDesk-Al’s Current Favorite all purpose site: http://www.refdesk.com/

WayBack Machine.com The Internet Archive Wayback Machine puts the history of the World Wide Web at your fingertips.The Archive 10 billion web pages archived from 1996 to the present. http://web.archive.org/

Search 5,000 news websites for stories by topic: http://www.daypop.com/

Newshub a news search engine http://www.newshub.com/

Here is a State by State list and links to every newspaper in the country that is online: http://www.usnewspaperlinks.com/

Look at information on any publicly traded company by using 10K Wizard. http://10kwizard.com/. Also, a great place to learn about executive compensation, lawsuits and inside trading since all of that is disclosed in SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission) documents.

CBS News’ Disaster Page fast links to resources ranging from storms, earthquakes and airline disasters http://www.cbsnews.com/network/htdocs/digitaldan/disasters.htm

Dose of News aggregates digital information content 24/7 http://www.doseofnews.com
http://www.doseofnews.com/index.php?loc=xtra

This is the largest collection of public records and databases. More than 5,000 databases searchable by state: http://www.searchsystems.net/

Finding People/Businesses Fast

Quick and easy general guides:

InfoSpace (http://www.infospace.com/)

WhoWhere (http://www.whowhere.com)

Internet Address Finder (http://www.iaf.net/)

Yahoo! People (http://people.yahoo.com/)

MESA, MetaEmailSearchAgent (http://mesa.rrzn.uni-hannover.de/)

Usenet Address Finder (http://usenet-addresses.mit.edu/)

Free Email Address Directory (http://www.emailaddresses.com/)

Addresses (snail mail and e-mail):

Find a person or business: http://www.smartpages.com/whitepages/

Zip Code lookup and address information http://www.usps.gov/ncsc

List of US Naval ships mailing addresses from the US Navy http://www.chinfo.navy.mil/navpalib/ships/lists/ship-fpo.html

WhoWhere http://www.whowhere.lycos.com

Internet Address Finder – E-mail Directory http://www.iaf.net

area code listing, by number http://www-cse.ucsd.edu/users/bsy/area.html

Privacy: What information about you is on the net http://www.delphi.com/navnet/privacy.html#cookies

Easy to find state and national links to over 1,600 searchable public records databases http://www.pac-info.com Who owns your state lawmakers, what conflicts do state lawmakers have with the legislation they are considering or agencies they regulate?

Pay Sites to get Private Information

http://www.onlinedetective.com/
Computer Spy tracks every keystroke on your computer http://www.computerspy.com/
http://www.backgroundcheckusa.com/

Tracking Government

State and local governments: http://www.piperinfo.com/State/index.cfm

Data on every county in America: http://govinfo.kerr.orst.edu/usaco-stateis.html

State facts-updated constantly: http://www.stateline.org/stateindex.cfm

See a state by state map to check the actual filings lawmakers must file to disclose a conflict of interest. Many states require net worth statements too. http://www.50statesonline.org/cgi-bin/50states/States.asp

The 50-state project by the Center for Public Integrity, a watchdog group:

http://www.50statesonline.org/ A two-year investigation found startling conflicts of interest and other
flaws in the system of state government, affecting policy decisions on everything from education to nuclear waste, taxes to health care

The Entire U.S. Code: http://uscode.house.gov/usc.htm

May We Tape? A listing of laws about how and when it is legal for you to tape a phone conversation or an undercover conversation from Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press http://www.rcfp.org/taping/index.html

Juvenile Court laws-a state by state guide: http://www.rcfp.org/juvcts/index.html

What are your rights as a reporter to get into public places and/or private places http://www.rcfp.org/places/

Calculators and Tools

Cost of Living Calculator. Uses the Consumer Price Index and is useful in comparing budgets, income, spending from one year to another. http://www.newsengin.com/neFreeTools.nsf/CPIcalc

Online Conversion – tons of other calculators http://www.onlineconversion.com

Everything from distance to weights and measurements wind chill.
Try this site for calculating percentages- (what is _% of __.)
http://www.onlineconversion.com/percentcalc.htm

More help figuring percentages. http://www.kricar.com/tools/perc.html

How much do people earn in their jobs? http://swz.salary.com/salarywizard/layoutscripts/swzl_newsearch.asp

Automatically converts numbers to Roman Numerals http://www.onlineconversion.com/romannumerals.htm

Driving distance between two cities calculator: http://www.onlineconversion.com/drivingdistance.htm

Calculate blood alcohol levels. All you need is weight of person, how long they drank and how many drinks they consumed. Plug them in: http://www.onlineconversion.com/bac.htm

How old is somebody in dog years? http://www.onlineconversion.com/dogyears.htm

Is that person dead? A place to look. They also list names of people who have been reported to be dead, but are ALIVE http://www.dpsinfo.com/dps.html

Find a grave site (2.8million listed) http://www.findagrave.com/

Biographies of famous people. This dictionary covers more than 28,000 notable men and women who have shaped our world from ancient times to the present day. http://www.s9.com/biography/

Search crime stats by state (clickable map) county or even zip code. This is a powerful tool. http://www.crime.com/info/crime_stats/crime_stats.html

The best national crime stats page I know of: http://crime.org/ it is a great place to find campus crime stats, crime rates, historic data and national links.

Other Crime Stats direct from the gov’t. Everything from Hate Crimes to Most Wanted from FBI. http://www.fbi.gov/ucr.htm

Sex Offender registry-for every state- click a state from the national map http://www.crime.com/info/sex_offender/sex_offender.html

Inmate finder many states list inmates and some, like Florida post inmate pictures and release dates. Search by state, name, alias. http://crime.com/background/background_check_inmate.html

Prison locators-death penalty laws links to every state correction department and shows you where prisons are located. http://www.crime.com/info/police_prisons/prison_locator.html

Federal Prisoner Search to 1982: http://www.bop.gov/

National Criminal Justice Reference Service searches 1,500 publications. http://www.ncjrs.org/search.html

Most Wanted

U.S. Customs http://www.customs.ustreas.gov/top/mostwant.htm

Secret Service http://www.treas.gov/usss/index.htm?wanted.htm&1

by the U.S. Government http://www.ibb.gov/fugitives

PoliceFind-a huge collection of cop links: http://www.policefind.com/police-crime-general.html

Who Owns What Website? Try http://www.marksonline.com/

If you need to find a personal web page or an email this one is about the best. http://ahoy.cs.washington.edu:6060/

Unravel IP addresses, host or name servers to figure out who is writing or hosting what. This is a one-stop shopping center. http://www.networksolutions.com/cgi-bin/whois/whois

Another all purpose website search tool if you have a website name and need to know who runs it. Also, useful if all you have is an ISP number, can trace backward to identify the user. Very useful in decoding who is posting to a listserv or bulletin board. http://www.samspade.org/t/

2000 Statistical Abstract-including state rankings on everything from infant mortality to average pay to number of physicians per population: http://www.census.gov/statab/www/ranks.html

2000 City Rankings from Statistical Abstract http://www.census.gov/Press-Release/metrolis.htm

Covering the Census – a guide. http://cronkite.pp.asu.edu/census/
Finally, the Bureau will be releasing the “long form” data that comes from the questionnaire filled out by a sample of about one of every six households. This data covers all the census questions, allowing you to pursue a wide range of topics including income, education, immigration, workplace, commuting, and a variety of housing questions.

How Does a State rank on percent of children living in poverty, percentage of people on food stamps, or crime rate change over 10 years? This site uses government data, which it footnotes very well. Also includes a couple of hundred metro areas. http://www.dismal.com/regions/regions.stm

Kids Count-from the Casey Fund for Children. It is an annual ranking by state including maps. http://www.aecf.org/kidscount/kc1999/

Practically every High School in America http://learnanytime.com/highschool/

Does it say that in the Bible? Bible Gateway searches the Bible in 6 translations. You type in verse or type in keywords and it finds the verse. Very easy to use. http://bible.gospelcom.net/bible
Especially useful when politicians or protestors try to quote from the Bible.

Denominational listings of major religions. http://www.toad.net/~andrews/jreldenom.html

Disaster Finder – a Who’s Who of disaster resources, from comets that could hit the earth to how to deal with animals when you have a big fire, earthquake or hurricane. Great site. http://ltpwww.gsfc.nasa.gov/ndrd/disaster/links/

Real Time Flight Tracking – see where an airplane is during flight. A remarkable mapping system that is great when you have to meet someone at an airport. http://www.thetrip.com/ft/home/0,2096,1-1,00.shtml

The Exact Time-live http://www.time.gov/timezone.cgi?Eastern/s/-5/java

Who Makes What? Industrial Index: http://101industrial.com/search.htm

Find Manufacturers by category: http://www.bizweb.com/

25,000 Expert Witnesses who have testified: http://www.juryverdicts.com/experts/index.html

Junk Science and Hoax Busters

Archeological Hoaxes: http://www.syntac.net/hoax/archforg.php

Celebrity Myths: http://www.urbanlegends.com/celebrities

Computer Virus Hoaxes: http://www.vmyths.com Learn about computer virus myths, hoaxes, urban legends, hysteria, and the implications if you believe in them. You can also search a list of computer virus hoaxes from A to Z.

Don’t Spread That Hoax: http://www.nonprofit.net/hoax/default.htm

Famous Hoaxes: http://www.nonprofit.net/hoax/infamy.html

Health Hoax: http://www.healthcentral.com/Centers/OneCenter.cfm?Center=Internet_Hoax_...

Hoaxes and Scares: http://www.sophos.com/virusinfo/hoaxes

Hoax Warnings: http://www.datafellows.fi/news/hoax.htm

Junk Science: http://www.junkscience.com

Myths and Legends: http://pubpages.unh.edu/%7Ecbsiren/myth.html

Science Myths: http://www.urbanlegends.com/science

Skeptic’s Dictionary: http://skepdic.com

Urban Legends: http://www.snopes.com

UFOs: http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Corridor/8148

Urban Myths: http://www.urbanmyths.com

Viruses, Worms and Trojan Horses: http://www.sarc.com/avcenter

Everyday Tools for Journalists

I don’t know how to get to the scene of a breaking story-go to http://maps.yahoo.com/py/maps.py, type in the unknown address, click GET MAP, then click DRIVING DIRECTIONS (type in where you are i.e. your TV station) and the site will spit out how to get to where you want to go.

Something is going on, you don’t know what it is, but need to find out fast-go to http://www.infospace.com which is a people finding resource. Look under the “white pages section” and click on REVERSE LOOKUP, scroll down to the address section and fill in the address you heard over the scanner, where all of the action is. Click the Find button. The search will spit out who lives at that address…but maybe you should not call there right now…Hit the “Back” button and to REVERSE LOOKUP…this time don’t type the house number, type in the street and city and state. The engine will send you all of the neighbors who live near the house where all of the action is.

A Database search Motherload-http://www.reporter.org/~drew/database.html

A plane crashed in my area-I need information-quick-go to www.landings.com it helps to identify problems with airlines and with individual planes. This powerful site will give you pilot backgrounds, aircraft safety records, specific maintenance records of planes (if you have a tail number) and tons of other details. Get familiar with this one-you will use it. www.faa.gov is a helpful site too. Also, try this site- http://www.planecrashinfo.com/

Here is a Poynter site that will help you learn how to investigate a plane crash on deadline. This site is a minute by minute log of how we investigated that crash. http://poynter.org/dj/052600.htm
5) Who is Dying from what-The CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality weekly report-http://www2.cdc.gov/mmwr/

This is the place where reporters first learned of the AIDS virus.

Charity Check-you need to know where all the money is going-every charity that takes in $25K has to file an I-990 form. They are the motherload of information and they are open for your inspection. Go to your local charitable solicitations board, your secretary of state or, now, online to see these forms. A great new site http://www.guidestar.com has thousands of these forms on file. They are constantly being updated and soon will include millions of I-990 forms.Also try this one from the BBB: http://www.give.org/reports/index.asp

Great toolboxes for journalists – http://www.workingreporter.com and http://www.cyberpaperboy.com, 1stheadlines.com (excellent), and (my favorite) Duff Wilson’s site http://www.seanet.com. Sites are one-stop shops for news. Duff’s site includes people finding engines.

The single best place for great stories-ire.org-Investigative Reporters and Editors site-many free and extremely low cost government databases that have already been cleaned up.

“whatdoyahaveformetoday?” Here are some great places to find news and keep producers and bosses happy. http://www.cpsc.gov is the Consumer Product Safety Commission and this is the site where they list all of the newest recalls. This is ideal for consumer reporters. http://www.eurekalert.org is a newsgroup that alerts you to the latest scientific studies often days before they hit the wires. Often, the stories are medical in nature. The site offers phone numbers and graphics.

State rankings on everything from crime rates, population, average pay, teacher pay, infant mortality. From census http://www.census.gov/statab/www/ranks.html. Also, try Stately Knowledge which provides essential state facts and direct links to state pages: http://www.ipl.org/youth/stateknow/

If you need to find a web page that has been taken off line. It might have been a screwup or something big has happened and the site does not want to be found. try www.google.com–click “cached” to find pages indexed-including pages that have been removed from their website.

Ask Jeeves – http://www.askjeeves.com-will find answers to reference questions-uses real language such as “who is Edward R. Murrow?” and it will spit out some sites that will tell you the answer. A good starting point, but not as inclusive as many other sites. Contains the answers to 150 million questions.

I have to interview someone and need a bio fast- http://www.biography.com is the place to start, then, for safety, check Yahoo.com and Altavista.com for general references and to see if the person has a website, then Altavista will double check to see if that person has been in the news.

Who is influencing my Congressman? http://www.fec.gov run by the federal election commission. You can search individual contributors, individual candidates or races. The actual disclosure forms are available online. http://www.crp.org tracks PAC contributions by race, which helps to understand which special interest groups influence whom. In politics, follow the money.

How to find people if all you have are names? Many great search engines require only a last name and will search multi-million name databases to help you find the person. Here are four good engines-each one a little different.
http://www.classmates.com-kind of an interesting site specifically for finding old friends in school-good if you are trying to background a person.
http://www.anywho.com-general search base-also can background companies and find people by e-mail or find e-mail of people you know.

http://www.switchboard.com-similar to above-but a little larger database.

http://www.411.com-a pay site-from $20 to $60 per search depending on the depth of the search.

Drug and Disease lookup-type in a drug and this site will give you the generic name/treatment/side effects. Type in a disease and this site will tell you about it. http://healthwatch.medscape.com/medscape/p/G_library/drugdirectory.asp

Kids Health issues -updated daily- excellent and easy to use: http://www.kidshealth.org/
Also, Mayo Clinic has a daily health update with front-edge stories and trends: http://www.mayohealth.org/

I need an expert NOW-http://www.profnet.com/- 11,000 experts and professors listed by areas of expertise, emails and phone numbers. These experts WANT to help that is why they signed up to be on profnet.

Snapshots and interesting trends-emailed straight to you- http://www.census.gov/

Translate almost any language into almost any other language. If you are trying to read a Spanish language page in English, for example, try this. http://www.systransoft.com/
also http://www.freetranslation.com

www.opensecrets.org -nonprofit/non-partisan site-crunches Federal Election commission figures to show you who is giving and receiving what from whom. Put in your zip code and find out who is donating to the presidential campaign.

www.vote-smart.org -a nonprofit/non-partisan group- details how congressmen vote on bills and issues. Now they are tracking platform positions taken by candidates on state and federal levels. You can also track legislation-extremely useful site.

More than 200 tip sheets on everything from ethics to leadership to writing from The Poynter Institute http://www.poynter.org/dj/tips/index.htm

Need to Know something about a country fast? Visit the Library of Congress Country Studies at http://lcweb2.loc.gov/frd/cs/cshome.html

Find any physician in the United States from AMA. http://www.ama-assn.org/iwcf/iwcfmgr206/aps?1168216196

Supreme Court rulings and briefs-by searchable index- http://www.law.cornell.edu/

You have the name of a website but you want to know who owns/runs it. Go to http://www.samspade.org/t/

Iping Cool tool-will call you and remind you of appointments, wakeup calls, will give you a wakeup call and read you news headlines. You program it. http://www.iping.com

What is everybody else looking at on the web? http://www.metaspy.com you can watch what key words other people are putting in-live. Refreshes every 15 seconds. Includes a filtered and unfiltered version. Choose carefully, the unfiltered version is no-holds-barred and gets pretty weird.

About.com-if you are starting from scratch on a subject and need to find out about it fast, this is a great way to start. http://www.about.com

Great Online Directories, Resources and References

How stuff works if you need to know how a jet engine works, how people get diabetes, how landmines work, how people pick locks, this is the place. Enter in a key word and find it http://www.howstuffworks.com/

This is not the Associated Press style-book, but it is a cheap substitute
http://web.missouri.edu/%7Ejschool/missourian/style.htm

Need help on a grammar question? Strunk’s Elements of Style is online
http://www.bartleby.com/141/

Who said that? Bartlett’s familiar quotations-look them up by key word. Familiar Quotations A Collection of Passages, Phrases, and Proverbs Traced to Their Sources in Ancient and Modern Literature http://www.bartleby.com/100/

Which bone is connected to which? Gray’s Anatomy of the Human Body features 1,247 vibrant engravings-many in color-from the classic 1918 publication
http://www.bartleby.com/107/

Search Shakespeare The 1914 Oxford edition of the Complete Works of William Shakespeare ranks among the most authoritative published this century. The 37 plays, 154 sonnets and miscellaneous verse constitute the literary cornerstone of Western civilization. Search by word, phrase or character http://www.bartleby.com/70/

The World Fact-book Brought to you by the CIA-this is the U.S. government’s complete geographical handbook, featuring 267 full-color maps and flags of all nations. Each country profile tracks such demographics as population, ethnicity and literacy rates, as well as political, geographical and economic data. http://www.bartleby.com/151/

http://www.britannica.com/ – Entire Encyclopaedia Britannica, free, all 32 volumes. Also, more than 70 newspapers and a directory of Web links, evaluated by Britannica editors.

Direct Search by Gary Price/George Washington University -
· state, county and local government databases http://gwis2.circ.gwu.edu/~gprice/state.htm
· campus crime stats from US Education Dept. http://ope.ed.gov/security/Search.asp
· federal list of research projects that are using tax dollars http://www.osti.gov/fedrnd/
· list of NIH is funding for medical research http://www4.od.nih.gov/ofm/diseases/index.stm
· Price’s List of Lists includes – richest, most powerful, best run companies, census releases, law firms, court settlements, what pro sports teams are worth and hundreds more. http://gwis2.circ.gwu.edu/~gprice/listof.htm

Spanish/Latino website QuePasa in English and Spanish http://www.quepasa.com/Front_End/Home_Page/0,1490,1-2-105,00.html

· Newspaper archives from Special Library Association. Search newspapers by state. Some of the archives are subscriptions, some are free. http://www.ibiblio.org/slanews/internet/archives.html
Meta Search Engines-search more than one engine at a time.

· The CIIR GovBot has gathered 1,594,012 web pages from U.S. Government and Military sites around the country. From the Center for Intelligent Information Retrieval at the University of Massachusetts. http://ciir2.cs.umass.edu/Govbot/

· Government search of government (fed) websites via Google. http://www.google.com/unclesam

· A fantastic search engine to find pictures and sounds http://www.mamma.com/ via Lycos network. This is my favorite place to go to find pictures of stuff.

· Use 17 search engines at one time- http://freeality.com. By doing this, you hit big chunks of the web you might not get if you only use one or two engines.

The 31-year-old nonprofit First Amendment Foundation, dedicated to open government moves to Poynter.
http://www.poynter.org/