Find the Facts

I am taking Fact Finding right now and before this course I had never realized the information that you can find on the internet.

Most information, even social security numbers, can be found on-line. Some tips for internet searches are important when trying to find the facts, or when you want to be a very detailed stalker.

First, it’s important to know the different search engines. Then choose the keywords carefully.

Next, don’t be afraid to guess – at first. When giving up is feeling good, don’t, keep trying. If it is necessary change the lower or upper casings of the key words — and sometimes it is necessary to let the feet do the walking, meaning, get out of the house.

For computer-assisted reporting there are some basics to know, it helps analyze large amounts of data, not just numbers.

It also requires critical thinking.

Computer-assisted reporting can be used for sports: statistics and salaries, campaign finance tracking and government agency budgets.

Investigative Journalism

I have recently been working on how to be an investigative journalist.

I started looking for sources in hard copy, or books, a word that is not uttered often enough in our culture.

I soon found that finding information by looking through books is much more time consuming and results in far less information than if you were to look up source information off the internet.

So, thus my search began.

I found that looking up article archives is pretty easy when you go to a newspapers Website and that you can just type in the information you want and then it comes back to you.

In a book, you have several pages and pages of information that are completely useless to the subject you are researching but you must prevail or else the grade will sting.

I am not a tech nut, but for a paper on investigative journalism the internet has proved quite helpful.