Working on a project with another reporter in another part of the country or maybe on the other side of your city?  No need to get together at the coffee shop or exchange long emails. Check out Writeboard.com. 

The writeboards are web based text documents that you can use when you’re collaborating on a journalism project with other reporters.   If you have to add more information or edit what you have; it’s all done in one place. 

Here’s the bonus; it’s free. 

Rebecca Aguilar is an Emmy award winning reporter with 29 years of experience.  Most of her years have been in television news, but now she is a multimedia freelance reporter based in Dallas, Texas.   She is currently a board member with the National Association of Hispanic Journalists.

Folks, allow me to introduce you to The Wayback Machine.

Now bookmark that site, because I guarantee you’ll want to go back.  Seriously. The Wayback Machine is an utterly amazing tool for investigative reporting. It’s basically a huge archive of old web pages that allows you turn back time and browse ze Internets like it’s Y2K….or 1998….or even 1996.

Just type in the URL of any website or page, hit enter, and you’ll be taken to an archived version of that website, so you can see what it looked like way back when.

A quick example: I recently visited The Wayback Machine and typed in www.spj.org – the website for the Society of Professional Journalists. A few moments later, the following list of dates popped up on my screen:

Those blue links are archived web pages that are available for viewing.

I clicked on the April 1997 link, and it brought me to the SPJ website….frozen in time, as it appeared over 13 years ago:

The Wayback Machine contains over 150 billion web pages, dating back to 1996. It’s great for doing research on companies, people, organizations….you name it. I’ve used it myself many times. Have you? Tell us about it in the comments below.

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Emily Sweeney is a staff reporter at The Boston Globe. You can follow her on Twitter (@emilysweeney) and find her on Facebook and LinkedIn, among other places.

Looking for stock video footage? Try the Prelinger Archives.

It’s a HUGE collection of videos that are in the public domain. There are more than 2,000 titles on a dizzying array of topics:  Automobiles… Bananas… The Middle East… Minnesota… Thanksgiving… X-rays… Heck, they even have films about newspapers.

Most of the Prelinger videos are available  in several different formats (.AVI, MPEG-4, etc.) Just download the title of your choice, import the clip into your favorite editing program, and you’re good to go. The films are in the public domain, and free to use however you want.

“Any derivative works that you produce using these films are yours to perform, publish, reproduce, sell, or distribute in any way you wish without any limitations.”

If you do use their archived footage, they’d be happy if you credit Prelinger Archives and the Internet Archive – but it’s not required. (And keep in mind, Prelinger doesn’t provide written license agreements.  So proceed with caution.)

To go behind the scenes of the Prelinger Archives and see excerpts from more films, check out this video. Pure awesomeness.

The Internet may be omnipresent in our lives but it’s becoming more friendly. Credit SMO for that.

SMO is short for “social media optimization,” a somewhat new and evolving concept employing social media tools such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn to promote content on websites, blogs or across other social media.

Until recently, the top tool for spreading the word online was SEO, or search engine optimization, in which words themselves are used to increase Web traffic by serving as online road signs of a sort for search engines to stop, read and announce to everyone else.

SMO, however, assumes that people, not search engines, are better at doing that. It relies on the notion that ideas are more important than individual words and that like-minded individuals will increase the publicity those ideas receive by sharing them with their family, friends and colleagues.

SMO’s origins go back to the mid-1990s when audio and video were gaining traction online and the public realized the Internet was destined to become a kind of clearinghouse for people’s whole Web identities, not just individual words. Marketing strategist Rohit Bhargava coined the term and proposed a five-point guide for it to increase one’s virtual visibility.

In time, the guide grew to accommodate the Web’s evolution and its audience’s increasing media savvy, so that now the overall strategy for effective SMO encompasses several key considerations for Web content producers:

Linking — It’s one thing to have a blog; it’s another to have people read it. Adding links that point to other blog or social media content provide attribution and illustrate depth of research. Other sites in turn may link back, thus increasing everyone’s visibility.

Tagging and bookmarking — Tags help describe content and simplify online searches. Embedded buttons for bookmarking services such as del.icio.us also point first-time visitors to specific content that they may want to use frequently.

Making portable content — PDFs and video and audio clips, for example, can be carried by other sites and help drive traffic back to the original source.

Encouraging mashups — A mashup borrows bits of content from several sources to produce new information in a unique way, much as human-interest interviews  can be combined to create a news story. Mashups often incorporate audio, video and mapping elements to tell stories.

Becoming a user resource — Posting interesting information, including information from rival publications, can turn occasional readers into devotees. They’ll see the information is always useful, accurate, and devoid of fluff and promotion.

Rewarding users — Giving credit to other information sources enhances credibility and distinguishes those sources as credible as well. It’s also a way of saying thanks to people trying hard to get their message across.

Participating — Speaking out, engaging in online conversations and sharing one’s knowledge or perspective in forums and other Web-based interaction advance ideas in ways mere words on a page cannot.

Targeting the audience — Location matters in real estate; the same can be said about the Web and its vast, ethereal landscape. Finding a niche is essential in an environment where being vague or general invites indifference.

Creating fresh, original content — Inside that niche, original content has a greater chance of getting noticed. That’s not to say though that old ideas should be ignored; even just a slight twist, either thoughtful or humorous, can put them in new and interesting light.

Being honest, staying true to one’s beliefs — Tricks and gimmicks intended to drive up Web traffic often have the opposite effect and damage audience loyalty. It’s better to be honest with the audience and remain focused and on message.

Thinking about SMO always — SMO should not be applied randomly but be used a tool of constant content creation the way notepads and pens have been for news reporters. It should be at the forefront of planning, at the forefront of organization, and include tactics and strategy.

David Sheets is a sports editor at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and STLtoday.com, and president of SPJ’s St. Louis Pro chapter. Reach him by e-mail at dsheets@post-dispatch.com, on Twitter at @DKSheets, or on Facebook and LinkedIn.

Boy, has journalism ethics when it comes to the use of social media been a hot topic lately.

And lucky for me, it falls right into what I had hoped to do with my joining the digital media and professional media committees for SPJ.

Cross pollination.

As a mid-career journalist, I was hoping to have people from the professional development committee talk about what they needed from the digital media committee. And vice versa.

Little did I know I would soon be pulling in the ethics committee.

How traditional – and new media – journalists handle themselves on this whole new “platform” of “social media” has become the cause de jour. It was the topic of an incredible tweetchat hosted by the DePaul University Chapter of SPJ and archived here:

http://ow.ly/35glD

Two of the guest tweeters were @spj_tweets and Quill Magazine’s own Scott Leadingham as well as TBD.com’s Steve Buttry. Since then, Buttry put out his suggested tweaks to the SPJ Code of Ethics here.

In it, Buttry references another great post by a former Cincinnati Enquirer colleague and current TBD.com social media producer Mandy Jenkins.s

And I will be part of a panel that includes noted media law attorney Jack Greiner (who represents the Enquirer) next Thursday for the East Tennessee SPJ professional chapter in Knoxville. It’s at 5 p.m.  so stay tuned for a hashtag to follow along if you can’t make it in person.

So to continue the theme, I actually interviewed SPJ’s immediate past president and current Ethics Committee chairman Kevin Smith about all this. Kevin is currently a journalism instructor at James Madison University in Virginia and an 18-year member of the SPJ ethics committee. Here is a bit of a Q&A:

James Pilcher: WHAT IS THE BIGGEST CHALLENGE ABOUT SOCIAL MEDIA AND JOURNALISM?

Kevin Smith: One biggest concerns facing us and has been facing us (at SPJ) is that so many people are engaged with new media or social media or multi-platform media. Our hope is that they will embrace our existing codes and ethics will fall in line with what has been our legacy.

But that isn’t … what is happening en masse.  So maybe we need to adjust.

JP: YOU HAVE WRITTEN A COLUMN ABOUT THIS FOR QUILL. CARE TO SHARE ITS CONTENTS?

KS: A couple of  weeks after the SPJ national conference, I went back out to Las Vegas and attended Blogger’s World. They had more than 140 sessions and only one was dedicated to ethics. The marketing directors and circulation directors were clearly in charge.

Clearly, there was no interest in this topic. Nobody who planned the conference thought that this would be a lively or relevant topic.

That was a bit indicative of  the things we are facing as journalists. And my column suggests that there needs to be set of standards.

WHAT SHOULD TRADITIONAL OUTLETS DO TO DEAL WITH THIS TOPIC?

This is definitely worth a review and it’s healthy to do that. What I would like to this year is to come up with not specific code for this new journalism … but something address the changes in our industry. I think SPJ needs to come up with a definitive stance on these kinds of things, and to point to specific incidents or generalized problems.

WHAT DO YOU TELL YOU YOUR STUDENTS AT JAMES MADISON? AND WHAT ARE THEY SAYING BACK TO YOU?

There’s definitely a mentality that’s moving away from journalism standards that we have traditionally worked under. And we need to wrap minds around that in how we look at someone doing social media that is outside that standard and make them understand that to point they can make connection to the standards.

James, you’ve had some real life experience and have been taught and learned though actual experience where that line is. A lot younger people do not know where the line is.

I had someone just out of school tell me a story that set me back on my heels. I knew someone recently out of school tell me an interesting story …  She covers city government, and someone mentioned to her that one of the city government councilman’s daughter was on Facebook often times cracks on her dad.

So she “friended” this teen-aged girl so she could stalk her on Facebook and see what she said about her dad and city government, without ever revealing that she was a reporter.  Do you think that is really an appropriate use of Facebook? That is the question facing us every day.

WHAT LESSONS DO YOU TEACH YOUR STUDENTS?

The first thing tell them is that we have an have obligation to independence. You need to ask yourself who you are working for and who you are representing and always tell them that at the beginning. We have obligations to truth and fairness of reporting.

And that’s where it all starts. The public has certain expectations. If you are going to put yourself out there and provide information, they expect that every time they see your name that you are telling the truth and there is a fairness to that reporting.

If not provide that, then you start creating credibility issues. And that’s where we start … with the whole idea of remaining independent and going a long way of short-circuiting conflicts interest.

Graphics are great tools to complement your reporting.

This two-part series will talk about why and how to create charts and graphs using Google spreadsheets.

The first blog post is a tutorial explaining the basics. The second will describe the more complicated Google motion charts.

Why Use Charts At All?

Simple. Charts help people digest large chunks of data. They also add color to stories and help break up text.

But most importantly, they help people better understand the information that is often the foundation of your stories. (And help the reporter see trends that can get lost in a sea of numbers.)

Like anything, there are ethical considerations when creating your own charts. Your information source needs to be credible. Make sure the proportions on your charts don’t distort the real story. Make only like comparisons in data. For example, don’t compare five years of test scores at one school to three years of test scores at another school.

Step 1

Get familiar with Google Documents, if you haven’t already.

You’ll need a G-mail account to use Google Documents. Once you’re set up with one, create a new Google docs spreadsheet. (It’s just like a Microsoft Excel document.)

Step 2

Figure out what kind of information you have, and what kind of chart you can use to display it.

Pie charts easily display percentages.

Chart Possibilities: How much of your town budget goes toward education and how much goes toward town expenses? What percentage of the total budget is taken up by payroll? Pie charts are a great way to show that, instead of just saying that.

Line graphs pinpoint changes in data sets over time.

Chart Possibilities: Did the budget increase over time? How does that compare to the town’s population changes over that same time period?

Bar graphs often compare several data sets in one snapshot in time.

Chart Possibilities: How does the town’s spending compare to other similar sized communities this year? How does the tax increase compare to area towns?

Step 3

Import your data. (Warning: You may be required to do some math to set up the information in the correct way to transform it into a chart.)

Keep in mind that most charts can compare two or three sets of data. So keep it simple. (We’ll get into large, complex data sets in the second part of this blog series, when we talk about Google Motion Charts.)

Some examples

Pie Chart:
In Google Spreadsheet, you’ll need two columns. Column A will be words: Payroll, Utility Bills, Transportation….. Column B will be numbers — specifically the percentage of the budget those corresponding words make up. (You need to do the math first.)

Line Graph:
You’ll need three columns: First will be years. Second and third will be data sets.

Don’t worry too much about how you set up your information. Google Charts can often recognize what kind of chart you are trying to create, or you can change things around later.

Step 4

Insert Chart.

Highlight the data set you’ve created and click on the Insert tab in Google Documents. On the drop down menu there’s an option for Charts. Click that.

You can chose from a variety of chart options in the menu.

Click on the tabs in the pop-up window to customize the titles for each axis and the chart title.

Once you click the insert button at the bottom of this pop-up window, the finished chart will appear within your spreadsheet. Voila!

Step 5

Export.

Once the Google Chart appears in your document, you have a couple options for how to export it.

Each chart will have a title in the left hand corner. Click on that title, and a drop-down menu appears.

If you click publish, you get HTML code to drop into a website or blog window.

If that’s your decided method, make sure you save your document and don’t alter the data. If you don’t save the document, the code doesn’t work. And if you change the data, the chart will update with the new information.

The easier way to save the charts is to simply click “Save Image.”

Part 2

Coming up next, we’ll talk about the much more interactive Google Motion Charts. The second part of this tutorial will appear later this month.

If you thought static info-graphics were powerful tools for displaying data, just wait! Motion Graphics will blow your mind.

Jodie Mozdzer is a web journalist for the Valley Independent Sentinel in Connecticut. She is a member of the SPJ Digital Media Committee and the treasurer for the Connecticut chapter of SPJ. Jodie is getting her masters degree in Interactive Communications from Quinnipiac University, with a focus on interactive news graphics. You can follow her on Twitter @mozactly.