Copyright or Copy wrong?

Posted on April 27, 2009 by Consuella Askew

Copyright and intellectual property rights may become the bane of your editorial or reporting job. How much of that commercial video or movie trailer can you safely use? Can you use that picture that was posted on the Flickr site which is the only picture you can find of the person you are writing about? How  do you source these things? We’ll deal with some of the practical matters of copyright with this post and a second post will be devoted to copyright in the Digital Age.

My disclaimer: This post is not meant to be a legal primer on copyright – I am no expert. However, it presents some basic tenants of copyright, reiterates some of the concepts you heard during our panel session, and provide additional resources so that you can learn more about copyright on your own.

WHAT IS COPYRIGHT?
WHAT CAN BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT?
WHAT IS THE PUBLIC DOMAIN?
WHAT IS FAIR USE?
GETTING PERMISSION
ADDITIONAL RESOURCES

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Descriptions of the American FactFinder Data Sets

Posted on March 9, 2009 by Consuella Askew

The American FactFinder tool provides you access to a number of data sets. A short explanation is provided below, for more information about these data sets (i.e., survey frequency, data collected, publication release dates, etc.) click on the title:

Decennial Census

The U.S. Census is written into our Constitution. It is a mandated “enumeration” of the population conducted every 10 years since 1790. The data is used for apportionment of seats in the House of Representatives among the states.

American Community Survey (ACS)

The ACS collects and produces population and housing information every year instead of every ten years. Provides more up to date information through the decade about how the United States population characteristics are changing.

Puerto Rico Community Survey

The purpose of this survey shares the same premise as the ACS for Puerto Rico.

Annual Population Estimates

The Population Estimates Program publishes total resident population estimates and demographic components of change (births, deaths, and migration) each year. We also publish the estimates by demographic characteristics (age, sex, race, and Hispanic origin) for the nation, states and counties. Estimates usually are for the present and the past, while projections are estimates of the population for future dates.

Economic Census

The Economic Census provides a detailed portrait of the Nation’s economy once every five years, from the national to the local level. The Economic Census is conducted every five years, in years ending in ’2′ and ’7.’

Annual Economic Surveys

In addition to conducting the Economic Censuses every five years, the U.S. Census Bureau conducts more than 100 economic surveys covering annual, quarterly, and monthly time periods for various sectors of the economy.

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Use Flickr for Still Images and Stock Footage

Posted on March 5, 2009 by Consuella Askew

Have you been looking for images that don’t seem to exist in the AP Images database? Try Flickr as an alternative source. Although many of the images shared may be by amateur photographers, you’ll find a lot of images in this source that you won’t find on the Web at-large.  In addition to still images, Flickr also contains some videos, screencasts and other media formats.

“What about copyright?” you may ask. Yes, this is still a concern with using images and other files found on Flickr, but requesting permission to use has never been so simple. Use Flickr Mail to contact and request permission from the owner without having to open another window.

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Dredging (or Dreading) the U.S. Census Bureau Web Site

Posted on February 27, 2009 by Consuella Askew

Even for seasoned information professionals like myself finding and/or extracting U.S. Census Data can be somewhat intimidating. First, the Census Web site is a multifaceted site presenting all types of information options on one page, which can be overwhelming at first glance. Secondly, you have to delve into the layers of the site in order to find the tools that allow you to search deep into the data sets. However, once you overcome your anxiety about using this source, you will learn that this site is a goldmine of information (and I speak from personal experience). So as not to drown you in information about the Census Bureau and its data collection and production efforts, I will try to break it down in multiple posts beginning with an overview that presents that “hidden” highlights of the Census Bureau Web site.

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Localized Census Data – New York Data Center

Posted on February 25, 2009 by Consuella Askew

Many of you have been looking for local demographic, business, or real estate data to add to your stories. When it comes to finding  New York or New York City data,  the New York Data Center should be among the first places you should check. The other places being NYC.gov and in particular, the New York City Department of City Planning.

The New York Data Center is a local source of data collected and compiled by the U.S. Census Bureau. Focused on New York, the Data Center experts repackages the Census Data and makes it accessible and available for New York stakeholders such as yourself.  When you visit the Data Center site, you’ll note the most commonly requested information about New York, including demographics, unemployment, and the consumer price index for NY are provided up front.

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Finding and Reporting Numbers

Posted on February 18, 2009 by Consuella Askew

You’ve just come across a great topic for a story, but how do you get across it’s significance or importance  in your pitch to your editor? Hmmm…how about using some facts and figures! Three million households in NY are impacted by floods each year…60% of single women will be infected with an STD before they reach the age of 30…Bedbug complaints called in to 311 NY are up 33.7% from last year. These sound much more impactful and descriptive than…a large number of NY households are impacted by flood each year….single women are more at risk of being infected with an STD before they reach 30 years of age….bed bug complaints called in to 311 have increased in NY over the past year. The former may also make the difference in your pitch as it addresses the “so what” question. You may question if these statements are actually true, I’ll leave that up to you to verify! :)

Where do you find such statistics, you may ask. There are several ways you can approach this: a) search Lexis Nexis, Factiva, or a number of the other newspaper aggregators, for statistics already reported and use the sources cited in the stories; b) go directly to the originating organization or agency web site to find the data; or, c) use commercial databases such as Lexis Nexis Statistics, Tablebase, TracFed, SocialExplorer, etc. that repackage a number of state and federal agency data.

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Finding Broadcast News Footage

Posted on February 17, 2009 by Consuella Askew

Looking for current or archival news footage as you investigate a story? Look no further. The J-School recently added a subscription to the iTV’s Critical Mention database. This video database provides  access to the top 100 U.S. designated market areas (DMAs) and the top 30 cable channels news footage with a 30-day rolling backfile. For archival footage of network broadcast news and news programs, The Vanderbilt Television News Archives is a good source.

These resources provide you with a means to study how broadcast stories are presented, learn what works and what doesn’t, as well as gather additional information on stories you may be pursuing. You will be able to study personal interviews with subjects, learn their “hot” buttons, and find out how a story has previously been packaged and presented.

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What Journals or Magazines Do We Have?

Posted on February 10, 2009 by Consuella Askew

From time to time you may come across a reference to great article that will either help put your story into context, or would be a great piece to use as background. You have the citation, but what next? Where do you look and what do you do to track down that article? You look at our small print collection and think – “I can’t possibly get this article from our library”. Well, you may be wrong. While we have a select number of print periodicals, we have thousands of electronic journals with full-text articles.

I showed you during the first class how to track down that piece by using our online e-journal search. For those of you who may have forgotten here it is again.

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Finding the New York AP Daybook Schedule

Posted on February 10, 2009 by Consuella Askew

Events for the New York day schedules are usually posted during the late evening the day before or the morning of the occurrence. While you may be able to access the historical schedules, there are no postings for future events – only the current day. There are a couple of different ways to find the New York day schedule as we discussed in class two weeks ago. You can access them via apexchange.com or via Factiva. Below are the instructions for using Factiva (which were also posted on the Reseach Center blog on 8/25/08):

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Search Strategies – Are you feeling lucky?

Posted on February 10, 2009 by Consuella Askew

Natural language searching popularized by Google has not been as widely adapted by the more scholarly or commercial database vendors. As a result, you cannot search Lexis Nexis, Factiva or a number of other database as easily as typing in an entire phrase and clicking on the search button. When you are working on deadline you need to be aware of the functionality differences of the tools you are working with.

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