Last week's research links and David Simon, again

Just a few things from last week, and a link from Sheila Lennon that relates to something I posted a while back: An interview with The Wire's David Simon, at Fancast.com. More insight from Simon, the former Baltimore Sun reporter:

The newsroom where I used to work (the Baltimore Sun) had 460 people. Now it has 300. And there are people out there who just don’t care. They’ll make more money putting out a mediocre paper than they would putting out a better paper. They know this. It's their equation. They’re quite content with mediocrity.
And within that culture we have people that are saying, ‘oh no, we’re going to do more with less,’ which is one of the great lies of the 21st century. What it means is we’re going to less with less. And that’s the nature of what journalism is becoming.
...Newspapers became vulnerable and it was only exacerbated by the fact that no one I ever saw at any of the newspapers -- with the exception of maybe of The Wall Street Journal -- anticipated the internet.

Booksearch from Kokogiak, searches fulltext books at A9.com, Google.com and MSN Live Search - at the same time.

Corporate Fraud Database from Law.com, reviews records of Corporate Fraud Task Force approached on its five-year anniversary.

Disciplinary Actions, links to state and association searches, including teacher discipline, physicians, law firms, brokers, etc. from Virtual Chase's people search links database.

Technology Timeline from AT&T Labs. Good history of telephones and telecommunication, and other breakthroughs.

Christmas Carols Database from AskSam. Browse or search lyrics online, or download database to AskSam reader.

MarketWikis: find free market research by category.

GovernmentDocs.org will allow "users to browse, search, and review hundreds of thousands of pages acquired through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) and other public disclosure, or “sunshine,” laws." Just launched.