Poynter Online - Al's Morning Meeting

Facebook Ads: Hardly Subtle
11:54 AM September 7, 2008

Home

Al's Morning Meeting

Story ideas that you can localize and enterprise. Posted by 7:30 a.m. Mon-Fri.

PoynterGroups.
Find and join conversations about Reporting, Writing & Editing and Online & Multimedia.

CHECK AL's TWITTER FEED for nonstop story ideas throughout the day.

UPDATED:JOIN AL ON THE ROAD AND LIVE ONLINE

APPLY FOR BROADCAST AND ONLINE SEMINARS

SEND AL YOUR STORY IDEAS

A dozen sites
I'm diggin'

1. "She's like a moose going after a cabbage." A fun piece watching the Palin speech with locals in Alaska.

2. Track Hannah with these storm tools I created on Ning.

3. Stay on top of Hannah with this site that includes radar, satellite, tracking maps, warnings and more.

4. The coolest storm tracking site I have seen in a while.

5. The site watches TV and Web mentions of candidates. It also monitors Tweets and more.

6. Instead of scheduling meetings by e-mail, everybody can work out a time and date online.

7. Here are tons of GREAT tools that will help you find anything on flickr.

8. Vloggerheads fights back against YouTube chaos.

9. YouTomb is where videos go after they're booted off YouTube.

10. The evolution of voting in America is shown by interactive mapping.

11. I have never seen anything like this amazing "Swan Lake" performance. [Flash]

12. This is my current home page.

All of my Diggin' sites are saved on Poynter's del.icio.us page.

EDITOR'S NOTE: Al's Morning Meeting is a compendium of ideas, edited story excerpts and other materials from a variety of Web sites, as well as original concepts and analysis. When the information comes directly from another source, it will be attributed and a link will be provided whenever possible. The column is fact-checked, but depends on the accuracy and integrity of the original sources cited. We will correct errors and inaccuracies when we become aware of them.

An Environmental Journalism Gold Mine

With the environment such a red-hot topic these days, the EPA's annual release of the Toxics Release Inventory is one of the most useful sources of solid local stories.

Some background from the EPA:

For tips on how to use the TRI and other pollution databases, I turn to the Society of Environmental Journalists:

Envirofacts Warehouse: One-stop shopping (almost) for a wide collection of EPA pollution and permit databases for air, land, and water. A user-friendly query interface makes it fairly easy to punch in your ZIP code or county and get relevant results. Also gives results in map form.

ECHO Database: The Enforcement and Compliance History Online (ECHO) database is a specialized tool for tracking environmental evil-doers (and do-gooders, too). It offers detailed history on virtually every company or facility holding an EPA permit -- including inspections, compliance record, and any actions resulting from non-compliance.

Risk-Screening Environmental Indicators: You have to order a CD to get this TRI-based model that yields very localized assessments of toxic risk to particular communities. Worth the trouble.

A listing of other EPA databases and software easily accessible to reporters and public. Example: "Surf Your Watershed."

Scorecard: A bit dated from its hey-day, but still relevant. A very user-friendly and localized tool for looking at a variety of EPA data on pollution and the risks it presents to communities.

And check out this Poynter article, "A Mortality Tale from the Scorecard Database," which cautions journalists to use these databases or they will go away.

Posted by Al Tompkins 12:04 AM April 3, 2008

Tools:
Comment

, e-mail

, Permalink

, Share

Al's Morning Meeting

Latest Poynter Blogs (See All Blogs)