Food for thought:
What we can learn from the Peoria Pundit from Prints the Chaff. So bloggers need: marketing, editing, design and publicity. Isn't that what we could get by blogging on the company web site? At least, in a perfect world?

First, a gorilla gets loose in Boston and attacks a little girl. Now, an orangutan in the Miami zoo bites a vet. The primates are restless. Who can blame them?

This guy deserves to be the villain in a Carl Hiaasen book:
(You know what happens to them.) Butchered alligators found behind Keys restaurant.

Speaking of Carl:
On Warren Zevon, letter posted on carlhiaasen.com.

This discussion isn't going away...
The role of the delete key in blog in today's NY Times (reg. req.)

In other news....
Nice new design for Side Salad, blog from Tampa Tribune features editors. Mentioned on Side Salad today (in feature on photo of Marlins fans):
Hudsonian, featuring geography, history and people of the Hudson River Valley, one of the most beautiful areas I know, and a beautiful Web site.

Spanish help:
The National Association of Hispanic Journalists has a great resource on its Web site: Using Spanish Words in English Publications. Extremely useful, especially for editors at a paper (like ours) that needs to use accents and diacritical marks correctly. I didn't know there were names for words with different types of accents: They are: Agudas (ah-GOO-dahs), words with accent on last syllable, like : alacrán, francés, sofá; Graves (GRAH-vays), words with accent on the penultimate syllable, For example, ámbar or Túnez; Esdrújulas (ess-DRU-who-las), with accent on the antipenultimate syllable, like matemáticas; and Sobresdrújulas (so-brays-DRU-who-las), like preséntamelo.
This is just one chapter of a larger Latinos in the U.S. Resource Guide, but I couldn't find a way to get to an introductory page. There are links to other chapters on this page, though. Included are a list of Hispanic/Latino organizations, lots more.

Weekend update: The weekly reference collection/research gleanings:
Still thousands of people without power more than a week after Hurricane Isabel. I saw a figure of 400,000 a couple days ago; I think by this time there were only about half that without power a week after Hurricane Andrew (it took us 11 days to get power back then, many people longer). Some good information sources:
Hurricane Isabel Information Center from Virginia Dept of Emergency Management. Also from: State of Maryland; NC congressman Richard Burr; Washington DC resident resource center.

Nice story in The Herald today about a very unusual librarian, Madame Esme.

The useful links....

Reference

High Holy Days on the Net

Red List of threatened species, searchable.

Earthquake data search: search earthquakes going back to 2100 b.c.

Heavens Above put in ZIP code, get current sky map.

World Weather Information Service from World Meteological Assn.

Terrorist and suicide attacks: Congressional Research Service study, released August 2003.

Information Resource: About herbs, botanicals, and other products useful information including links to studies, from Sloan-Kettering.

MedicineNet.com health portal with lots of news/info. Includes a Webster's New World Medical Dictionary. Has RSS feeds so you can get news easily, by topic.

The science behind drug abuse from NIDA for teens. (That's Natl Inst. on Drug Abuse).
News:

Parade magazine archives searchable back to Jan. 2000.
Tools:

Google location search lets you confine a search to a geographic area (address, city/state, or ZIP code). From Google Labs.
Journalism:

Research you can use links to research studies on newspapers from Assn for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication. Also has a great journalism links page.

We Media How audiences are shaping the future of news and information. The PDF report converted to HTML on Hypergene Web site.
Public Records:

Mississippi parolees; Mississippi inmates
Governments, Politics:

Rough and Tumble: California Web site posts links to coverage of recall election.

Political Influence: how political non-profits work the system from Center for Public Integrity.

UK Central Government Web Archive
Business:

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) directory
People:

Forbes 400 2003 listing of richest in America just released.
Statistics:

County Population Estimates from Census, latest estimates have demographic breakdowns.

Most expensive ZIP codes from Forbes. Six in Florida: Miami, Palm Beach and Captiva.

Facts about Hispanics in the U.S. from Census, for Hispanic Heritage Month.

International Education Indicators stats from DoEd.

Create customized maps of unemployment data from BLS.

Namestatistics.com database pulled from Census shows most popular first and last names. Not same as the annual Social Security Administration list of most popular given names. You can search for a name's ranking, too.
Florida:

Florida brokers search on Miami Herald site. Get background, complaints.

Polk County Clerk: civil, deeds, public records.

Does Larry Klayman live in Miami or not? important question, since he's running for Senate from Florida....in Tampa Trib. good use of public records in this story. (via Joe Adams).
Some Interesting stories/Weblogs:

Stumbling into war Foreign Affairs analysis of how the Bush admin. got into it.

Kate Blanchett plays Veronica Guerin in a new movie, based on the life of the murdered investigative reporter for the Sunday Independent in Ireland.

How a regular guy gets homeless: by one-time WSJ reporter living in his pickup truck. In USA Today.
Fun/Entertaining:

Movie Target find official websites.

Forgotton Detroit homage to a city's architecture. Fantastic photos, information on lost buildings.

This is sad:
The end of Fleet Street: the last English-language media tenant (Reuters) is moving to the Docklands, ending a 500 year journalism history in City of London. In the Guardian.

In this week's New Yorker:
Newshound, The many tales of R.W. Apple, Jr., by Calvin Trillin. Just as we've gotten to read his classic story on Edna Buchanan, another triumphant journalist profile by the great Trillin. Unfortunately, not available online on Newyorker.com.

Stepping back:
I like Derek Willis' take on the current flurry over edited blogs on newspaper sites.

Herald stuff
New Yorker archive features Calvin Trillin's 1986 classic article on Edna Buchanan, and that 'cojones' tiff at Poynter: on my Herald blog.

Random finds:

Candidate Camera David Hume Kennerly gives every California gubernatorial candidate a digital camera; results are posted to this site.

Fazzle new search engine searches Wisenut, Altavista, Teoma, Lycos, Yahoo, MSN, and Netscape. You can register (free) to get advanced search features, including a news search. There's a 'best of the Web' and 'all the Web' search, image and video searches. You can also bookmark or email search results. From a Palm Beach company. (via Tara Calashain)

Listamatic great tips for adding navigation to Web pages. (via Dan Gillmor)

Folklore and Mythology E-Texts: great place to track down a story by the Grimms or Andersen or Aesop. Lots more story sources here from around the world, among them a great collection of world origin myths, including the Raelian one....

William Greider: one of my favorite reporters.

More journalist blogs
My list of them is going to be too long, soon. The number is growing rapidly. Just after I posted a few new copy editor blogs, Tom Mangan links to more. This one is interesting: News Designer. He also links to some new copy editor blogs.

Weekend update: The weekly reference collection/research gleanings:


The useful links....

Reference

The Gallup Brain 60 years of polls in a searchable archive.

National Atomic Museum. in Albuquerque.

Waterwatch: USGS site shows current water levels compared to average.

Hurricanes and coastal storms websites; nice collection of links from USGS.

AntiTerrorism and Force Protection Glossary from Naval Facilities Engineering library.

The Taliban File: National Security Archive is posting previously classified documents on Afghanistan.
News:

Los Angeles Times has been added to ProQuest Historical Newspapers project.

Vanity Fair is now on Nexis, starting with the August 2003 issue.
Tools:

Whois Source recommended by Gary Price and others as best free Whois (domain name) search.

Polybuscadores new reference site en español will have several reference sources. Right now includes several encyclopedias and dictionaries. From Peter Jacso
Journalism:

Newspapers rethinking offsite linking; story in OJR.

Newspaper execs clueless about what women want column in Womensenews.com.

See list of new blogs, below.
Public Records:

UK Documents Online new service has scanned documents. Search for free, image download costs 3 pounds. Includes government documents, military records, wills. Latest file added: Wills filed at Canterbury from 1384-1858- Free sample: Shakespeare's will.

SoonerAccess: Oklahoma public records searches, including companies, trademarks, notaries, churches, banks.
Governments, Politics:

Our Documents new .gov site gives access to 100 important documents in U.S. history.

U.S. Government Manual New edition of this essential guide.

U.S. Treaties in Force from Dept of State.

Federal Budget Tradeoffs database: from National Priorities Project.

Kicking Ass: the Democratic Party (DNC) has a blog.
Business:

Leading National Advertisers from AdAge, annual directory.
People:

Civil Rights Movement Veterans site has over 200 veterans listed.
Statistics, Florida: No links this week.
Some Interesting stories/Weblogs:

Pressthink: blog by NYU J-prof Jay Rosen.

Copy editor blogs keep popping up: Copy Massage; Smilin' and Stylin'; Prints the Chaff (new address); Nicole Stockdale

The Border: Yuma, AZ reporter covering Mexico border posts photos and text on what he sees (mostly lots of pot).

MisLeader "a daily chronicle of Bush administration distortion" from the folks at MoveOn, the antiwar org. (also available by email.) (via JD Lasica).

TVTattle.com a new TV gossip/news blog.

The Good Life in Minnesota project by St. Paul Pioneer Press using public records and CAR to find out how things are going.

Kaye Trammell: So this is mass communication? UF grad student blogging about blogs.
Fun/Entertaining:

Begging to Differ Sunday comics for a change...

Reports from the Front:
I've posted some links to Isabel bloggers on the Herald blog. And some other things.

And another thing: I remember watching houses floating down the Potomac, and Georgetown manholes spouting geysers. This was 1972, and due to a puny formerly-category-1-then-tropical- storm, Harrisburg was swamped, the governor's mansion filled with mud. A couple of my brothers spent several days mucking stinking trash out of buildings in the Ithaca area. Hurricane Agnes was the most damaging hurricane up to Andrew, and when I hear people here pooh-poohing Isabel because it was 'only a category 2', it drives me crazy. I don't think anyone in the DC area right now would say that. The link is to a NOAA site put together for Agnes' 30th anniversary last year, with links to other histories.

Culture watch:
This story making the email rounds. Fun to learn 'dickhead' isn't a new term....


Amazing concert coverage on A&E last night, Paul McCartney in Red Square. Emotionally wrenching interviews with people who were covert Beatles fans 30 years ago and who were overcome at being able to join thousands of other Muskovites at this astounding outdoor concert. Seeing footage of Vladimir Putin arriving to watch as Paul and his -- excellent -- band played 'Back in the USSR'.....priceless. Something we never could have dreamed of in 1964......Who is that incredible drummer? I've been wondering since the last televised concert.
Some video clips here.

Speaking of Isabel:
Poynter has pulled together all their Isabel coverage, including Al's Morning Meeting links, David Sheddon's links, coverage tips, and more.

The Washington Post is on this story like flies on sugar (or should that be 'ants'?). I really like today's Filter column, which is full of fascinating and useful links on Isabel.

And, speaking of songs you can't get out of your head, I just picked up a review copy of a book called The Song Reader. The premise is that you can figure out what's going on in your head by interpreting the songs you choose to hum. Fascinating concept.

Thursday:
I don't know about you, but ever since Johnny Cash died, I've caught myself humming "I walk the line" constantly. Never was much into the song before, but the other day someone printed the lyrics. Now I know what it's about, the power of love. Something he probably wouldn't have lasted this long without.

Something I should have mentioned a couple days ago: Liz Doup covers South Florida blogs in the Sun-Sentinel.

"Eliminating the Bimbo Factor": very nice posting by Tim Porter on his First Draft Weblog about future of journalism. He thinks it's good. Interesting comment: "To my even greater surprise, I feel compelled to return to the newsroom, something I never would have predicted because I left it disillusioned by the rigidity of its hierarchy, by the desperate but substantively hollow grasps for readership and by the creeping acceptance of mediocrity as an editorial standard, the latter often rationalized with complaints about lack of resources or the penury of publishers, as if good journalism would suddenly materialize if somehow a newspaper had 100 reporters instead of 80 or even 10 instead of eight." He also recommends This speech by Tom Rosensteil of the Committee for Concerned Journalists.

Getting it right:
Gary Price welcomes linkers from an article referencing his site with an explanation. Amazing the power a blog gives you, to amplify what you've read elsewhere and set the record straight when it's not quite right.

Isabel!
Not much I can contribute to the diligent compilings going on out there in research land. Others are watching and compiling for those of us who are going to need resources on this storm. Among them, IRE staff, Al Tompkins and David Shedden from Poynter, Journalists Toolbox.

I'd add a couple of things, though. Papers struggling with hurricane coverage are going to want to know how other papers handled their tragedies, and lots will want to see the Miami Herald's coverage of Hurricane Andrew. Luckily, we compiled all the coverage in our 100th anniversary package last year. The stories submitted for the winning Public Service Pulitzer Prize that year are archived here.

For storm coverage, the Herald's Storm.herald.com weather site has a lot of hurricane information compiled, including preparedness tips. The Palm Beach Post's hurricane site is also well-regarded. The Sun-Sentinel put together an award-winning package on Andrew's 10th anniversary.

A couple sites I use regularly and usually don't see linked on other sites:

Tropical Storm Update, from U. of Miami's Rosensteil School. This is a simple page that loads quickly and just gives you the forecast tracks and satellite views. Very useful.

Atlantic Tropical Weather Center, from U. Colo, gives you all the advisories, satellite views, and other info that you could get from the National Hurricane Center if it's not overwhelmed with traffic.

Online Meteorology Guide: Hurricanes from U. Ill., has a Tropical Cyclone Tracker that shows you animated tracks of every tropical storm/hurricane since 1950. The track shows changes in intensity as well as lat/long, speed and pressure along the way.

The Charlotte Observer is asking for photos from along the coast via email. A wise move.

New Century, part two:
Today, The Miami Herald has a page of links about the redesign changes debuting today, including a profile of designer Mario Garcia. This page also includes a couple of the features published yesterday in a special section I couldn't find online, including columns by Garcia, editor Tom Fiedler and publisher Alberto Ibarguen.
I find it fascinating that they've taken a new feature, 5 Minute Herald, a new news summary page anchored on the back of the local section, and made it a Web feature too. Seems to me the main Web page was always meant to be (but might not always succeed at being) a 5-minute newspaper. Or at least that's the way I think a newspaper Website should help readers find the news they want, fast.

Also in The Herald today, a fascinating investigative report by Dave Kidwell on city of Miami employees who take their city cars home. Many of them don't live in Miami, and several drive far, far away. The city pays for gas. Under the New Century rules, these stories are now called "Herald Watchdog" stories. Hmmm...

New Century:
Today The Miami Herald celebrates its 100th anniversary, with a new radical redesign starting tomorrow, by Mario Garcia and team. Although the paper contains a special section with stories by/about Garcia, columns by editor Tom Fiedler, and guide to new sections, I can't find it online. There is, however, Fiedler's anniversary column which ran on 1a today, with links to profiles of Miami centenarians. Other parts of the feature are missing, though. I hate it when things that appear in the newspaper just don't materialize online.

One cool thing:
I posted a link to a hurricane forecast graphic on the Herald site on Friday. Just noticed that it's not the static graphic that Friday showed Isabel pointed at Florida; now the graphic shows a much more northerly track. Nice to see that the graphic URL is dynamic. Although it defeats the point of the link as I felt Friday....

A few vacation photos....

Weekend update: The weekly reference collection/research gleanings:
A long list this week, catching up. Things are looking a little better on the hurricane front, at least for South Florida. I'd be worrying more now if I lived in the coastal Carolinas/Georgia. But still, too soon to tell for sure. Definitely gets your edge up.

And, here's the last weekday front page before the Herald for the new century debuts on Monday. It'll be looking very different. More on the changes in Sunday's newspaper.

Polls and surveys. They're happening all the time. We get good leads on them, often thanks to Gary Price and Al Tompkins, who post links as soon as they find them to their Resouceshelf and Morning Meeting sites (links in left-hand column).
But what do you do with them? I post them immediately to our Intranet, and hope that reporters who might want to use the data find them. I know many of these get covered by the wires, so editors see them in the incoming feeds, but not all. There must be a more proactive way to publicize them: do you bring them to news meetings? Send out newsroom-wide or newsroom leader-wide emails? Just tell a specific assignment editor? Not a researcher's job? Who else in your newsroom is monitoring what's new on the Web? Here are a few that I noted this week:

Latest War on Terrorism poll reports at Program on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA) site. "War on Terrorism Has Not Made Public Feel Safer".

Internet use by region from Pew Internet.

Identity Theft report from FTC.

ASCE Scorecard on America's infrastructure. Roads, dams, schools, etc. mostly get Ds. From American Soc. of Civil Engineers.

Global survey of conflict, 2003

Global E-mail threats charts and graphs from Messagelabs track viruses and worms worldwide.

There's news from Blogger, too, in case you haven't heard. Subscribers to Blogger Pro, who paid about $35 a year to get extra features like spellchecking, posting by email, and RSS feeds, were told this week the service will now be offered free to all users, now that Blogger belongs to Google and the extra income isn't a necessity. People who've already paid get a free sweatshirt. The rest of us get extra stuff, except RSS, which is not yet available.

The useful links....

Reference

Great links on nuclear weapons from Sree Sreenivasan.

Nutrition Data incredibly complete analysis of fast foods, common foods, or custom recipe analysis. Here's a plain Krispy Kreme cake doughnut. Tools section allows you to create

Hot Topics: Hispanic Heritage month lots of background material, links, from Evergreen College library.

A comprehensive glossary of weather terms for storm spotters from National Weather Service in Norman, OK.

Nazi-Era Provenance Internet Portal search for art works.

The Wayback Machine is now searchable! Find information from old Websites. Direct link to Recall page with info about the search.

FreeMedicalJournals.com free archived articles from several prominent journals.

Conflict Statistics from Middle East Policy Council. Has total killed, bimonthly stats back to Sept 2000.

EPA report on World Trade Center site in PDF.

TRAC Report on Homeland Security

CIA Factbook on Intelligence, updated.

Criminology Web Sites: A "Webliography" from Info Today.
News:

Seattle Times archives now available back to 1990 for free. Just need to register.

Al-Jazeera English version now, a permanent website.

Great news sites for kids nice list from Cyberjournalist.

Google News: Italia now Google offers news sites for Australia, Canada, France, Germany, India, Italy, New Zealand, the UK, and the US.
Tools:

Sunrise/Sunset tools from U.S. Naval Observatory: Complete Sun & Moon data for one day; Construct table for one year.

Argali White & Yellow: download this service which searches several online phone directories at once.

TV Eyes Searchable TV! Enter your keyword and TV Eyes will send you an email with link to transcript whenever your search term is spoken on a program with closed captioning.(or send it to your PDA via Avantgo.)

Cool Search tricks: nice list of Google and other search tricks from J.D. Lasica, reprinted from an earlier blog entry.
Journalism:

Media Info Center has news and statistics, like Top 20 newspapers. From NWU.

American Photojournalist: By journalists. For journalists.
Public Records:

Findlaw document archive index Findlaw has been keeping original court documents on major stories going back a few years. This is complete index.

Connecticut inmate information

New Mexico Inmate search

Illinois Public Domain Land Tract Sales database of over 500,000 land sales in the nineteenth century.
Governments, Politics:

World Trade Special Report lots of stories, facts and figures from Independent.

California gubernatorial recall candidates: list, bios and info from NY Times.

Foreign Relations of the U.S., 1900-1918: access to documentary volumes from library at U.Wisc.

Rule of Law and Cuba FSU site has dissidents' sentencing documents.
Statistics:

Foreign Born Population of the U.S. press release and charts from Census.
Business:

Company Information Guide: the Virtual Chase lists sites that offer SEC information. Note one company, EDGARIQ, has gone offline.

GasBuddy.com site tracks local links for gas price information.

NFL Team Valuations, 2003 from Forbes. Dolphins ranked 10th; Redskins 1st.
People:

Integrity in Science database search for scientists, find corporate ties. Or search by university or company.

People Search on 192.com now searches 2003 UK electoral roll.

Finding experts from Mary Ellen Bates' Tip of the Month. (via Journolist

Brother Outsider site devoted to Bayard Rustin.
Florida: No links this week.
Some Interesting stories/Weblogs:

PopJustice: interesting blog from UK on pop music and downloading/file sharing, more. I like this message to Cristina Aguilera about Brianna LaHara:
"Get your chequebook out and write the cheque, Christina. This is not about you condoning the illegal distribution of your work. Nor is it a signal that you will pay the fine of anyone the RIAA sue for taking your work. This is about showing solidarity with your fans. "

Blog hard news on your site Steve Outing says this is the best way to get news quickest to your readers. Sounds right to me.

PR Bop Tara Calashain's new MT blog on "weird and wonderful off the wires". Goofy stuff from PR newswires.

10,000 birds: a blog by a group trying to reach this number of species. Lots of good birding links here, including Avibase, a world bird database.

Side Salad blog from a Tampa Trib features editor.

Salam Pax on how he got into blogging from his newly published book. "I became the profane pervert Arab blogger".

The Blog Herald "More blog news, more often".
Fun/Entertaining:

Comics by RSS: get your daily comics in your news aggregator!

Catch 33 fun game: catch each number from 1-33.

Not keeping up very well this week:
For some reason, hectic since coming back from vacation on Monday. Some things are hanging over us, especially this:

(Graphic of path of Hurricane Isabel, no longer on site)

Even better, a massive redesign of The Herald is debuting Monday, to commemorate beginning of our second century.
More to come on both of these. Especially Isabel.

I thought things were getting back to normal this morning but no such luck. I'll do a weekend update, probably tomorrow morning, to try to catch up.

Still busy, catching up:
But a few fun things:

Scrablog fill in the scrabble tiles to see how many points you can get. Enter the answer in 'comments'. (via Library Stuff)

Ottmar Liebert. If you love the music, you'll like the blog. (via Shifted Librarian)

Merlefest. 231 days away. Tickets available online. (via Metafilter).

Chapter one of The Baghdad Blog. (via IDO3)

And, fascinating story on Nexis hacker:

Hacker runs up Nexis bills on NYT account

More on the NYT Nexis hacker from securityfocus.com $100 a search? Seems possible to me, if he was searching ALL files.

Journalists and musicians:
Dave Barry writes .....a moving obituary of his friend Warren Zevon, in today's Herald.

Alicia Shepard does the best profile of Woodward and Bernstein I've read, in Washingtonian. You probably saw this linked in Romanesko a few days ago, but for an old Postie like me, this is fascinating stuff. Lots of comments from old friends/coworkers. She nearly catches the wannabe-rock critic Bernstein's character, at least with this quote, from Richard Cohen: "He knows more about classical music than almost anyone I know. He knows more about rock music than anyone I know. As I got to know him, these layers kept appearing.".
There's even a quote from All the President's Men researcher Bob Fink, who now lives here in Miami. She didn't get the other researcher credited in the book -- me, though...

Back, but busy:
Have posted a few things to The Herald blog. More here later.