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FEATURED SITES

Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting: From the World Security Institute, this site provides in-depth resources on global affairs.

SpinSpotter: An interesting software tool that claims to expose news spin and bias, misuse of sources, and suspect factual support. Uses algorithms to spot spin keywords on sites you surf .

NinjaWords.com: A fast, accurate dictionary. Great for looking up words quickly.

Hard to Find 800 Numbers: Organizes companies alphabetically and displays phone numbers and hours of operation.

The Associated Press Polls: Lists links to recently released AP polls on various topics.

Neat New Stuff on the Web: A great list of resources, updated weekly, from library researcher Marylaine Block.

SiloBreaker: An online search service for news and current events that delivers meaning and relevance beyond traditional search and aggregation engines.

The Center for Public Integrity has compiled a comprehensive two-million-record database that includes every federal lobbying document filed since 1998. Read more.
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[Industries] Accountants Agriculture Agriculture Products Airlines and Aircraft Automotive Banks Beer, Wine & Liquor Building Materials Building Unions Business Business Associations Business Services Chemicals Communications Computers Conservative Construction Contractors Credit Companies Credit Unions Crops Dairy Defense Defense Aerospace Defense Electronics Education Education, Public Electricity Electronics Energy Environment Environment Services Finance Food Food Processing Foreign Governments Foreign Policy Forestry Gambling Government Gun Control Gun Rights Health Health Workers Hmos Home Builders Hospitals Human Rights Industrial Unions Insurance Joint Candidate Law Firms Leadership Pacs Liberal Livestock Lobbyists Manufacturing Mining Non-Profits Oil & Gas Other Issues Pharmaceuticals Policy Organizations Poultry & Eggs Pro-Choice Pro-Israel Pro-Life Public Officials Public Unions Publishing Railroads Real Estate Recreation Religious Groups Retail Savings & Loans Sea Transport Securities Services Special Trades Steel Telecom Telephone Utlities Textiles Tobacco Tourism Transportation Transportation Unions Trucking Tv, Movies & Music Unions Waste Management Wildlife Women's Issues

Wall Street Crisis: Use resources in the Economic Crisis, Stocks/Markets, Business News, and Personal Finance sections to cover the financial bailout and other market news. Related Resources: Federal Government and Labor Issues.

Election 2008: The Toolbox's Election 2008 section has been updated with background on the debates, campaign financing, polling, etc.

Economic Impact: The National Retail Federation projects low holiday sales in the coming months. Search its consumer trend data, organized by topic. The American Psychological Association has released a stress study that focuses on women, and includes some economic stresses.

News Industry Blogs: We have updated the Journalism Blogs page with several new resources, including: The Future of News Blog, written by University of North Carolina professor Ryan Thornburg.; The Journalism Iconoclast, a new media journalism blog run by Patrick Thornton; the Institute for Analytic Journalism Blog, which also features a podcast, data-analysis tools, graphics etc., that are managed by a team of working journalists and academics throughout the country; MattWaite.com, which provides tips and resources from web developer and CAR expert from the St. Petersburg Times; and the Washington Journalism Education Association Blog. Related Resources: Search Engines-Blog Search Tools and News Industry.

Just for Fun: From the "You Can't Take Everything Seriously Department": Use the ABC News MatchoMatic tool to see what candidate statements you agree with. It's a very fun, clever way of looking at the election.

Gas , Food and Housing Prices: Gallup.com has a great collection of survey information and news on rising gas costs. Mapquest has a page to track gas prices in your area. Zillow.com gives estimates on individual home values. Use resources in the Toolbox's Business Resources section to track the housing market , gas prices, food costs and other economic issues. Related Resources: Personal Finance and Labor sections.

Editing: The Copy Editing page has several new resources, including teaching tools such as EditTeach.org, JProf and GrammarGuard.org.

Design Sites: The new update includes The Mario Blog, a news design blog from guru Mario Garcia; and The Mario Classroom, Garcia's design and typography teaching blog. Find more design resources, including bloggers and reviews of several recent newspaper redesigns, in the Toolbox's Design section.

Public Records: Syracuse University's Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) has compiled prosecutions for the first nine months of fiscal year 2008 from the U.S. Department of Justice. The report contains national crime statistics and comparisons to previous years. TRAC also provides free reports on the latest law enforcement trends. on prosecutions and convictions that occurred in June for many categories of enforcement such as immigration, terrorism, white collar crime, official corruption, drugs, etc. Free reports are also available for major agencies such as the DEA, FBI, IRS and DHS. Related Resources: Public Records, Crime and Legal sections.

Add Public Records Resources: Footnote uses the National Archives to digitize and upload every document housed there. You can cull through thousands of famous documents.

Severe Weather Resources: The Toolbox's Weather section features several resources to cover hurricanes, tornadoes and other storms. You'll also find some helpful flooding-related resources in the Weather and Public Safety sections.

Public Safety: Safe Road Maps is an amazing site from the University of Minnesota that allows users to enter their address and see a map or satellite image of all the road fatalities that occurred in their area. The search can be narrowed to determine the age of the driver, or whether speeding, drinking or seatbelts were factors.

Military: Troopspace.net is a social networking forum geared toward U.S. troops, families and anyone looking for military connections. The site can be helpful for networking and finding personal/family-generated stories in your area. Ancestry.com: Military Records offers thousands of records, old newsreels, etc. You can search by war, era or follow a timeline of events to find the information.

Iraq: The American Copy Editors Society site has background and an FAQ on military, weapons, media outlets and more. It's great for quick fact-checking. PBS Frontline has an excellent background piece, Private Companies That Make America's War in Iraq Run. Also find several new resources in the Iraq and Military sections.

Writing With Numbers: SensibleUnits.com converts measurements, distances, weights, etc. into objects to which a reader can relate. Weird Converter is great for analyzing numbers and coming up with odd facts and figures for stories. It's great for comparing sizes, weights and gives the reader some perspective. Find more resources in the Toolbox's Writing With Numbers section.

Legal Resources: The Knight Center for Specialized Journalism developed a beat guide for courts and law coverage on its website. Simply go to the website and page click on "Learn More" on the "New Resource" box. The International Center for Not-For-Profit Law Directory allows you to search legal documents, court cases, reports, and other civil society resources from countries around the world. ICNL's Online Library currently contains 2,300 resources from 144 countries in 37 languages.

Covering People With Disabilities: You'll find hundreds of resources on the Disabilities page.

Free Speech/First Amendment: We've added several new resources to the Free Speech/First Amendment page.

Jobs: The Toolbox's Jobs section features dozens of journalism job databases and search resources. They're organized by news, sports, photography, PR, etc.

Just for Fun: Check out the Cool Sites page for funny, offbeat web tools. The Strange News archive shows that fact truly is stranger than fiction.

Teaching Tools: Many of you who use this site train your newsrooms and classrooms how to do online research: College Media, High School Journalism, Print Design, Broadcasting, Ethics, Writing, Reporting Techniques, Writing with Numbers, Photojournalism and Copy Editing.

Reporting Tools: Reporting Techniques, Phone/E-Mail/Maps Directories, Search Engines, Expert Sources, Investigative, Form 990s, Public Records, Ethics, Check Domain Names, General Research and Writing With Numbers.

Editing and Fact-Checking Resources: The American Copy Editing Society has assembled a collection of 49 online quizzes about everything from AP Style and usage to Iraq and the Middle East. Related Resources: Copy Editing, General Research, History, Domain Sites and Writing With Numbers.

Writing with Statistics: Test your skills with IRE's interactive math quiz. After you've taken the test, click on the link at the bottom of the page to find out how to arrive at the correct answers. You'll find more resources like this one on the Writing with Numbers page. Related Resources: Spreadsheets, Business, Finance and Federal Government Census Data.

Student Resources: College and high school students will find many helpful Toolbox resources for researching papers, reporting and more: Reporting Techniques, Public Records, History, Ethics and Copy Editing.