Best Practices
This is a place to archive tipsheets, ideas and best practices I’ve accrued over the years. Most of these have been written either by myself or my former colleagues at the Herald News and NJ Local News Service. Much of the information is based on workshops and seminars hosted by the fine folks at IRE. A great place to start when trying to learn computer-assisted reporting is the Reporters’ Cookbook wiki.
- Accuracy checklist
- Audio, How To
- Backgrounding
- Beat development
- B-matter
- Boxes
- Budgets
- Business, big and small
- Byline policy for CAR reporter
- Campaign finance
- The Census
- Convert PDFs to Excel
- The Copy Desk
- Crowd estimates
- The Daily Routine
- Data validity checklist
- Documents every gov’t reporter needs
- Engaging young readers
- Fair Comment
- Google search
- Graphics for word people
- HIPAA
- Interviewing
- Investigations, documents & data
- Legal Ads
- Math
- Narrative
- Nexis
- Non-profits
- OPRA
- Projects
- Real Estate
- Religion
- Spreadsheets & Excel
- Story development
- Third Places
- Training
- Transparency
- Video
- Weather stories
- Web research essentials
- The Weekbook