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Everybody needs a little FOIA machine
Have you tried the alpha FOIA Machine? It’s from the Center for Investigative Reporting with funding from the Knight Foundation (some $47,000) and a Kickstarter campaign? Investigative reporter Djordje Padejski got the project going. Here are some tips on using it. The Center for Investigative Reporting calls the FOIA machine the “TurboTax for government records.”
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Bot journalist reported California quake first
Ken Schwencke, a journalist and programmer for the Los Angeles Times, was jolted awake at 6:25 a.m. on Monday by an earthquake. He rolled out of bed and went straight to his computer, where he found a brief story about the quake already written and waiting in the system. He glanced over the text and…
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Google’s spreadsheets just keep getting better
Google Sheets is an extremely powerful tool for journalists. If you’re a “math-challenged journalist,” you owe it to yourself to learn how to use Google Sheets. Here’s a Google video on late 2013 update.