Key Web sites for
Specialized Reporting:
Computer-Assisted Reporting

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Communications 438T

California State University

Specialized Reporting: Computer-Assisted Reporting

Spring 1999

1. Resource sites for journalists

www.acs.ryerson.ca/~journal/megasources.html — Megasources: A source-specific list of Web sites, compiled by Canadian journalism professor Dean Tudor.

www.seanet.com/~duff/ -- Seattle Times’ reporter Duff Wilson’s Reporter’s Desktop.

2. People-finders

www.four11.com -- Phone and e-mail directory; with Power Search you can do a reverse lookup of all e-mail addresses stemming from a particular domain name.

www.dejanews.com — Power Search option features reverse e-mail lookup. www.reversephonedirectory.com — Just what it sounds like; type in a phone number and find out who it belongs to.

www.worldemail.com/wede4a.shtml — World E-Mail Directory; has reverse lookup.

www.anywho.com -- People-searcher.

www.iaf.net — Internet Address Finder.

www.infobel.be/inter/world.asp -- International phone directory

www.westpub.com/WLDinfo/lspwld.htm — West Legal Directory; the place to go if you’re looking for a lawyer.

www.ancestry.com — So you’re looking for a dead guy. No problem. Look him or her up in the Social Security Death Index.

www.mapquest.com — Think a street address in a strange city is useless? Think again. This Web site can map many, many addresses and provide driving directions.

3. Chat rooms

There are several tools on the Web for finding out what people are saying in Internet chat rooms. Here are some.

www.dejanews.com

www.forumone.com

www.3awebcon.com/chat/index.htm

http://uptwon.turnpike.net/L/Larry14/irc.html

www.chatlist.com

4. Stand by for news

www.totalnews.com - News sites.

www.newsbot.com — More news sites.

http://sunsite.unc.edu/slanews/internet/archives.html - Newspaper archives on the Web.

http://listen.to/TheNews — Links to 100 RealAudio television and radio sites worldwide.

5. Specialized search tools

www.internets.com -- Databases on the Net.

www.isleuth.com — More databases on the Net.

www.internets.com — Still more databases on the Net.

http://www-sci.lib.uci.edu/HSG/RefCalculators.html — Calculators.

http://infolab.cs.uchicago/edu/webseer/ - A search engine for images on the Web.

6. Basic Web resources

www.internic.net — Web site registration center with reverse lookup of site administrators.

7. General reference

www.m-w.com/dictionary.htm — Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary.

www.onelook.com — OneLook Dictionary. Combines many dictionaries, including some technical books.

www.travlang.com/languages — Hable espanol? Parlez vous francais? No? Then you’ll want to check this dictionary of foreign languages for travelers.

www.thesaurus.com — Roget’s Thesaurus.

www.cc.columbia.edu/acis/bartleby/bartlett/ -- Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations.

www.refdesk.com — Weights and measures, trivia, links to newspapers and more.

http://thorplus.lib.purdue.edu/reference/index.html — Virtual Reference Desk.

www.reference.com — Another all-around reference site.

8. Statistics

www.census.gov - U.S. Census Bureau. THE place for official numbers on population, economics and dozens of other subjects.

www.fedstats.gov — FedStats. Links to virtually every federal government Web site containing statistics.

http://www.odci.gov/cia/publications/ — CIA World Factbook. A guide to all the world’s countries from the cloak-and-rusty-dagger crowd.

9. Business

www.sec.gov -- Securities and Exchange Commission. Contains news (including lawsuits against alleged fraudsters), rulings and the EDGAR database of reports by publicly owned corporations. It isn’t the easiest place to search, but EDGAR is a Mother Lode of business info; several business sites sell or give away enhancements to make EDGAR even more valuable.

www.pinstripe.opentext.com -- Business sites on the Web.

www.hoovers.com — Hoover’s Handbook: Contains detailed profiles of many public companies.

www.prnewswire.com — Search an archive of corporate news releases; lots of puffery, but there’s some good history in there too.

www.companysleuth.com — CompanySleuth: Links to lots of Web tools for researching businesses.

www.hunterinformation.com/corporat.htm — Directory of corporate archives.

10. Politics and government

www.fec.gov — Federal Elections Commission: Campaign finance reports.

www.crp.gov — Center for Responsive Politics: Very detailed workup of FEC data, including breakdowns of fund-raising by congressional district and interest group. Also the Registered Federal Lobbyists Database.

www.tray.com/fecinfo — Still more processed FEC info, including contributions by Zip code.

www.state.ca.us — State of California Web site with links to many state offices and to California counties and cities. Use the same pattern, replacing "ca" with any other state’s two-letter postal abbreviation, to find that state’s Web site.

11. Health and medicine

www.drkoop.com — Dr. Koop’s Community: The former surgeon-general has compiled a lot of health data, including a drug interaction database.

www.gen.emory.edu/medweb/medweb.db.html — MedWeb database.

www.os.dhhs.gov/progorg/ophs/ -- U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

12. Entertainment

http://us.imdb.com/search — Internet Movie Database.

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