There are six broad categories of helpful tools for online journalists, according to experts like Nora Paul of the Poynter Institute. The categories are newsgroups, listservs, e-mail, Gopher, telnet and search engines.
There are six broad categories of helpful tools for online journalists, according to experts like Nora Paul of the Poynter Institute. The categories are newsgroups, listservs, e-mail, Gopher, telnet and search engines.
If you would like to read a short explanatory piece about any of these resources, click on the links above, or click here to visit the directory page. Otherwise, scroll through the following table to go straight to the resource or a related link.
| DejaNews | Newsgroups are great places to get the skinny on technical subjects. They're like public bulletin boards where anybody can post anything they want and anybody can read it. Dejanews will give you lots and lots of posts people have made about specific subjects. (For quick instructions on how to access newsgroups via Netscape, visit the short piece on newsgroups.) |
| Liszt | Listservs are groups of people who conduct discussions on a variety of subjects from Anthropological Linguistics to the Datsun Z via e-mail. This is another treasure trove of technical information and explanation. Click on the link to access a list of these lists, aptly named "Liszt." |
| Four11 | Everybody loves e-mail, and this is a cool online phonebook of e-mail addresses, plus phone numbers and addresses across the nation, six net phone directories, a government directory, and e-mail and home addresses for celebrities. Another good one: Whowhere. |
| Gopher search utility at NYSERnet | Gopher is an elderly (or at least middle-aged) search engine that is not used as much these days. It can be useful, though, because unlike other search engines whose databases are only made up of URLs, it can find documents and files that are not yet part of Websites. You just need to be patient, both because it's often hard to get to and because the search results are described so tersely you often have to visit the little puppies to get an idea what they are. |
| No linked resource necessary - it's a modem thang | Telnet is a simple process whereby you can log onto another computer system - the library, for example, and its online card catalog, or a bulletin board system. Though you do need special software to do it, once you've got your software working, the telnet process is extremely simple. |
| OVERVIEW OF SEARCH ENGINES | Search engines are the sixth basic tool for electronic journalists. The following lists a few of the better-known search engines, with one or two tips about each. |
| Yahoo! | Many of the experts speak highly of Yahoo!, which they describe as a directory as well as a search engine. Example: A recent search for "Internet search engines" through AltaVista yielded two results. Yahoo! came up with 34 site matches, all of which were grouped by category, such as "Computers and Internet: Searching the Web," "Understanding WWW Search Tools," and the like. |
| AltaVista | Many of our experts mentioned this as a favorite search engine, saying it often yields more search results than others. AltaVista's instructions for simple and advanced searches are well-written and easy to follow. An AltaVista tip: if you're searching for a phrase, like "Internet search engines," in order to get the engine to recognize those three words as an entity, enclose them in quotation marks. |
| Excite | Both Excite and Infoseek have a feature called "more like this" which makes it possible for you to generate new queries based on documents you found when you first searched for something. This is a feature that not all search engines have. |
| Hotbot | One of the nice things about HotBot is that you can choose among various ways to search for your document and then save the choice so your search will automatically be customized the next time you visit. |
| Lycos | Unlike most of the other search engines, whose databases contain mostly Usenet news groups and WWW pages, the Lycos database also contains FTP and Gopher links. Lycos is also nice because it has lots of tips for searchers on how to best use the service. As of February 1979, Lycos claimed to have close to 70 million URLS in its database. |
| Infoseek | Like Excite, Infoseek has a "more like this" feature that lets you generate new queries based on relevant documents you found during the first search. Also, like Excite, Infoseek has a "yellow pages" directory for the Web called "Big Yellow." Infoseek claimed to have over 50 million URLs in its database as of January 1997. |
| Magellan | An unusual feature of Magellan is that the Magellan folks rate the Websites in their database on a 1-4 scale for quality. The database is comprised of Webpages and classification is by subject. |
| Webcrawler | Those in the know say Webcrawler's strong point is quick searching for top level Webpages. Since the search engine indexes web page titles and summaries, rather than the full text of the sites, its coverage is broader but offers less in-depth information. With Webcrawler, you can search by document title as well as for content. |
The above are the six basic Internet tools for reporters as defined by the experts. The following are some specific Websites useful to reporters. The first list is a way to help journalists obey the Watergate dictum, "Follow the money!"
| FECinfo | This site provides campaign contributions by zip code and also provides federal election information. |
| Internal Revenue Service Digital Daily | Searchable site filled with tax codes, federal income tax information. |
| U.S. Treasury Department | Searchable database of Treasury Department information. |
| Common Cause | This site has information on soft money political donors as well as Congressional voting records. |
| Center for Responsive Politics | Information on campaign contributions, as well as voting records and profiles of Congressmembers. |
Here are some resources geared specifically toward journalists: first, for helping writers use the Net, and second, just a few of the many journalistic organizations with Websites.
| Primer on computer-assisted journalism | An invaluable guide to computer-assisted journalism by New Media Goddess Nora Paul, an associate at the Poynter Institute for Media Studies in St. Petersburg. |
| World Wide Web CAJ resources | More computer-assisted journalism resources from the distinguished Poynter Institute. |
| American Journalism Review | The well-known journalism publication that maintains a list of 50 Websites of note. |
| Newspaper Association of America | A nonprofit organization based inVirginia made up mostly of daily newspapers, with over 1,500 members. |
| Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press | A good site to visit for information on law and the press, specifically the right of access to documents. |
The Online Toolkit was created by Janis Mara, a master's degree candidate at the University of Florida College of Journalism and Communications, and David Carlson, UF Interactive Media Lab Director.
Last updated April 1997.