Mountain Xpress Data Page

NEW!!! City of Asheville Data Index!

Also, see NC Public Records Law, especially section § 132-6.1. and § 132-6.2.

Example of data request letter: http://www.attribution.net/fire/letter example.htm

Jump to Session 2
Jump to Sessions 3 and 4

Mountain Xpress Workshop, Session 1: Finding Data

Learning

Link to IRE Conference tipsheets is below the T-shirt graphic.

/firecar.html: A selection of helpful links for reporters, compiled by FIRE.

/nonprofits.html: More handy sites. These were compiled for nonprofits, and some links are duplicates, but there are also items of interest here for reporters. See "Other Helpful Sites."

Searching

http://www.google.com: The world's best search engine. Starting with simple, specific search terms that will help you find the results you seek.

http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/TeachingLib/Guides/Internet/SearchEngines.html: The best search engines, with tips on how to use them.

Finding People and Businesses

Accurint: Find out SS#s, etc., for a quarter.

JournalistsToolbox Investigations Page—Plenty of search and database sites listed, such as SearchSystems.net.

PowerReporting—Another great site with numerous links for conducting searches. For instance, people searches and company searches.

Hoover's Online — Basic information about corporations for free, and more details for a charge.

Guidestar: Information / tax forms on nonprofit organizations and foundations.

More Data

Census 2000: Some say a good reporter can spend an entire life just covering the stories contained in the Census.

http://www.buncombegis.org/: A work in progress. Search property records and various County locations graphically. With GIS, you can compare data sets graphically. Crimeand education example.

Current Events

http://www.ire.org/resourcecenter/war_resources.html: Covering the military and the war. Numerous links at IRE.

http://www.nowarblog.org/: Resources about anti-war opinions and efforts.

http://www.crf-usa.org/Iraqwar_html/iraqwar_links.html: Links to many sites on Iraq, the war, war blogs.

Mountain Xpress Workshop, Session 2: Excel 101

Excel Tutorials

http://www.fgcu.edu/support/office2000/excel/

http://www.usd.edu/trio/tut/excel/

http://homepage.cs.uri.edu/tutorials/csc101/pc/excel97/excel.html

http://www.wcu.edu/ccenter_inf/CatOnline/MSEX/

Information Access Resources

http://www.rcfp.org/elecaccess/: The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press guide on Access to Electronic Records, by state.

EXAMPLES to download to Excel

http://www.census.gov/population/estimates/nation/intfile1-1.txt: Download text files.

http://www.census.gov/hhes/hlthins/hlthin00/hi00ta.html: Download HTML.

http://www.census.gov/ipc/www/wp98.html: Download PDFs.

http://www.buncombetax.org/propdata.asp: Buncombe County property download.

Mountain Xpress Workshop, Sessions 3 & 4: FileMaker Pro 6

Filemaker Resources

http://www.afilemakeraffliction.com/list.html: A very thorough and well-organized collection of free FileMaker tutorials and definitions of terms. Especially useful for beginning to understand ScriptMaker and scripts in general. Tips on how to slice up text fields into more than one field.

http://www.fmforums.com/threads/ubbthreads.php: FileMaker Forums. A great collection of Q&As from FileMaker users. Search the archive for an answer to your question, or send an e-mail asking someone to help you solve a problem.

http://FileMakerAdvisor.com/: FileMaker Advisor Magazine. Plenty of articles and tips about FileMaker, such as more about slicing and parsing text.

http://www.webmastermac.com/tips/filemaker/: More FileMaker tips, with a good set of FileMaker links.

IRE (Investigative Reporters and Editors) Data Resources

http://www.ire.org/carbook/exercises.html: Here are some lessons and exercises out of Brant Houston's Computer-Assisted Reporting: A Practical Guide, Second Edition. There are also some Mac files to practice on from the first edition.

http://www.ire.org/extraextra/: "Your Guide to the Latest Investigative Work." Features many hot stories that rely on Computer-Assisted Reporting.

http://www.nicar.org/: National Institute for Computer-Assisted Reporting. Publishes Uplink and has online copies.

http://www.campaignfinance.org/: Campaign Finance Information Center.

http://www.ire.org/datalibrary/: Data from IRE, for a fee.

http://www.ire.org/foi/: Freedom of Information center.