Web sites in Chapter 12

12-1.Virtual Media Source Book

       Begin acquiring online sources that you will use in your career. Consider this your online address book. This is a major assignment.  Type the name of the source and the URL in a word processing program. Even though you can and should bookmark good sources, this list needs to be portable so you can take it with you when you get a job. To get started, link to the Virtual Media Source Book; then add resources you will need in your field as well as those you want.

 You can take a shortcut to this assignment by creating bookmarks or favorites when you find a useful site that you want in your source book. Then save the bookmarks on a floppy disk as instructed in the chapter.

Check other Safaris in Chapter 3 for media organizations that might be helpful resources.

Back to top


12-2. Reporting Safari

     Take this safari to a world of resources.  The links are provided for you to help you find the answers and to reveal some remarkable Web resources for journalists.  You may want to bookmark some of these sites and add them to your virtual source book.

1. You are writing a story about how much debt college students incur for their education. You want some national statistics.
Go to Fedstats, to Agencies, then to The National Center for Educational Statistics and check the FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) site.  You could go there directly, but this link takes you through Fedstats so you can see all the other federal statistics that are available.

2. You are having trouble getting information from a source, and you want to check out your rights granted under the Freedom of Information Act.

Check the Freedom of Information Center at the University of Missouri or the FOI Center maintained by the Society of Professional Journalists.

3. You are writing a story about sexually transmitted diseases, particularly the growth of herpes among college students. You want a good medical definition and some statistics about the disease and incidence among age groups.
There is a lot of bad medical information on the Web.  But you can trust information from the New England Journal of Medicine, which you'll find on Medline, the National Library of Medicine, which has 9 million medical documents. For excellent medical information on sexually transmitted diseases and other subjects, you should also check the U.S. government's National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control , which also has statistical information.

4. You are working on a story about growth in your community and you want to get population statistics from the last U.S. Census. Advertising majors looking for marketing information can also use this site for all sorts of demographic data.

Just type in the name of your town and get the statistics you need from the U.S. Census Bureau.

5. It's election time in your state, and you want to know how much money candidates for Congress from your state spent. You also need related information about government in your state.

You can find campaign contributions and much more at the Federal Election Commission site.  For all other kinds of government information for your state, check out Yahoo's state government directory

6. You are studying media law, and you have to learn about the Supreme Court decision on about the  Communications Decency Act.
Find the opinion and all sorts of legal resources at Findlaw.

7. The weather has changed drastically, and your editor wants a weather story. You decide it would be interesting to contrast your weather with the temperature in Fairbanks, AK and in Hawaii. You also need a forecast for your city.
You'll find forecast for your local area, state, national and international weather at The Weather Channel. or CNN's weather site.

8. You are working on a story about campus crime, and you want to compare statistics for your college or university with others.
You can start your search at the Security on Campus, Inc. site.  You'll find all sorts of information about college crime. If you don't find what you want there, head over to the Academic Crime Statistics Link guide and a related National Crime Statistics Link Guide, all of which you'll want to bookmark if you're on a police beat.

9. While you were in the campus crime sites, you noticed some interesting stories and statistics about binge drinking on campuses.  You've decided to do a story about the subject, and you would like to contact a professor or medical expert in this field.
Contact Profnet, a network of public information officers who will find you an expert at www.profnet.com.


12-3. People Safari

(This is an assignment from Chapter 3 in case you skipped that chapter.  It is also useful in reporting.)

Search for your e-mail address and/or your residential address and phone number using any of the following people-finder Web searchers. If you don't find yourself with one of these search directories, try another. 
Bigfoot
WhoWhere
Four11 
Infospace
Switchboard
Back to top 

12-4. Deadline Web Reporting Weather Disaster

 Here are some weather and disaster links:
• The Weather Channel
• CNN's weather site
• The Amercian Red Cross
• Disaster Relief.Org
• Interactive Weather Information Network
• Government Information
• State Emergency Management Offices
• Earthquake Information Center
• National Hurricane Center
• National Warnings Area

Back to top

12-6. Test Your Editorial Judgment

       Test your news judgment against the producers at CNN.  Which stories would you choose to put on the CNN site.  Play this game, You be the Producer!

Back to top