Al Tompkins/Poynter
tompkins@poynter.org  727-821-9494

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Read Al's Daily Column "Al's Morning Meeting"
  I hope this site is useful. Drop me a note if I can help you or your newsroom with your training needs. 

• See my Twitter page for updated story ideas daily http://twitter.com/atompkins
  
• Click on my del.icio.us page for tons of resources
  http://del.icio.us/altompkins

Run Google and Yahoo at the same time http://twingine.com/
http://www.draze.com compares Google, Yahoo and MSN and give peek-a-boo pages to let you quickly peek at the results.
 

NEW  A new search engine that I like as a Google alternative http://www.cuil.com

 a meta engine for blogs http://www.zuula.com/

DoubleTrust.net Here is another version that shows what Yahoo and Google agree on and what each finds that the other misses. http://www.zuula.com/

http://clusty.com/ a new search engine that returns answers in clusters

http://www.chacha.com ChaCha uses LIVE real humans to help you with your search.

http://technorati.com/ is the place to go to search blogs

www.ask.com instead of ordering results simply by popularity, it orders them by “popularity among pages considered to be experts on the topic of your search.
http://accoona.com/   brand new search engine site. This one lets you sort news results by state, county, by time or date published. It is a GREAT tool for journalists.

Tracking Terror http://www.globalincidentmap.com/home.php  (site is amazing but loads slowly)

 The Free Version of Lexis/Nexis http://www.lexisnexis.com/news/

http://www.zipskinny.com explore any zip code in-depth using Census data

http://www.imooty.eu/ A European news site that pulls from tons of resources. Very nice.

NEW  http://www.sensibleunits.com/ Turns numbers into shapes

I need a picture of somebody or something http://images.google.com
or try this one based on Lycos http://www.mamma.com  (Mamma also searches audio and video files)

http://www.flashearth.com/ compares Google, Yahoo, NASA and other maps with one click
 

http://www.truveo.com/category/News  mega video search engine searches myspace, youtube, aol, yahoo, google and more



Tools to Find Stuff/People/Places

 I need to find a website that has been offline for years-or how can I find out what a website looked like on a certain date? This site has logged 85-billion pages (yes, you read it right-Billion) going back to 1996.  It is the only site of its kind. http://www.archive.org/index.html
 

Find the Hidden subdirectories of any url http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/

 Find video or audio from movies, TV, radio and internet www.singingfish.com
 
Easy to find state and national links to over 38,000 searchable public records databases (is for pay)  http://www.searchsystems.net/  Use this site to look up licenses for doctors, lawyers, dentists, lawn care companies, Psychologists you name it.  This is a gold mine!

State and Local Government Website Index (http://www.statelocalgov.net/index.cfm): Perhaps the most comprehensive online directory to government websites, this index provides the user with links to every department website imaginable for each level of government. The user is brought one step closer to the public records sought by being connected with the appropriate government agency, from statewide offices to the smallest branch of a city or township.

What Licenses do States require of any given profession or occupation? Enter by profession or by state  http://www.acinet.org/acinet/lois_start.asp?soccode=&stfips=

Property Tax records for any county in the United States.  See who owns what property and how much tax they paid.  You can also learn about renovations, additions and basic mortgage lien information on any property. http://indorgs.virginia.edu/portico/personalproperty.html

 Look up the estimated value of any property http://www.zillow.com/ (Note, plenty of people have arguments with Zillow’s estimates.)  

 Search records for every public school in every state in America. http://www.schoolmatters.com/
 

Find backgrounds on millions of individuals-free : http://networking5.zoominfo.com/PeopleSearch/AdvancedSearch.asp?nlb=4%2F13%2F2005+8%3A05%3A54+PM
 

By far the most complete free phone, address and people search tool because it uses many engines at once. Requires a free download. http://www.argali.com/
 

http://www.411.com/, phone finding  site.  Also finds neighbors


 A new people finding search engine that claims to have indexed 180 million names already. http://www.spock.com/

 A name search engine—includes a nifty tool that lets you set your search around areas. http://wink.com/

http://pipl.com/ A people finding search engine searches “deep web” including SEC files, social networks, Amazon, Flickr and more.


NEW Searches Facebook, MySpace, Linkedin and more social networks for names http://yoname.com/

Zabasearch.com Another people finding software. The basic search is free, deeper searches cost $20-$100 http://www.zabasearch.com/
 

Find family members, criminal backgrounds and previous addresses http://www.peoplefinders.com/

 Searches for audio and or video online http://www.everyzing.com/index.jsp?il=en
http://www.blogdigger.com/index.html
 

Annual Reports for Investors (http://www.annualreports.com): Annual reports are accessible in their original formats. The user can search by company name, ticker symbol, industry, or sector. There is also an alphabetical index of all companies providing reports. All reports are free, and no registration is required.

 

Zip Code lookup and address information http://www.usps.gov/ncsc m

Is that person dead? A place to look.  They also list names of people who have been reported to be dead, but are ALIVE http://www.dpsinfo.com/dps/index.htmlhttp://www.dpsinfo.com/dps/index.html

Look up death records by social security records http://www.ancestry.com/search/rectype/vital/ssdi/main.htmhttp://www.ancestry.com/search/rectype/vital/ssdi/main.htm

Biographies of famous people. This dictionary covers more than 28,000 notable men and women who have shaped our world from ancient times to the present day. http://www.s9.com/biography/
http://politicalgraveyard.com/ thumbnail IDs of long-ago politicians

OBRB Publications Free Resource Center (http://www.brbpub.com/pubrecsites.asp): More than just a directory to free public records searching, the Free Resource Center also provides links to articles to assist users in public record searches. In addition, the "Public Record Newsroom" lists current items in the news relating to public records of all types.

Lists of every known professional and business association in America http://en-av.besthotels.com/org/alpha/list-alphai_10.html

Construction Weblinks: Public Records (http://www.constructionweblinks.com

This is a directory of mostly free websites to help the user learn different types of information about specific companies in the United States. Websites are arranged alphabetically and include bankruptcy data, earnings reports, pending litigation, and license suspensions.

Pretrieve (http://www.pretrieve.comhttp://www.constructionweblinks.com/Industry_Topics/Public_Records/public_records.html)): This resource serves as a gateway to services on hundreds of websites that provide public records free of charge. Searches can be conducted by personal name, business name, address, or telephone number. For businesses, it provides financial, legal, trade-related, and research records, many as scanned images of originals. The user can view property records and even satellite imagery of both business and residential properties.

Who Exports What to Where (state by state) TradeStats allows you to see what each state exports and to whom they ship the stuff. Pick your state, pick a product and click the start button.  The site is presented by the Office of Trade and Industry Information (OTII), Manufacturing and Services, International Trade Administration, U.S. Department of Commerce. http://tse.export.gov/SEDHome.aspx?UniqueURL=flskea45au4e4p45lyaxqu45-2005-5-10-16-0-23
http://tse.export.gov/SEDHome.aspx?UniqueURL=flskea45au4e4p45lyaxqu45-2005-5-10-16-0-23 

Public Records Finder (http://www.publicrecordsfinder.com): Both business and personal public records are indexed in this comprehensive database. Nationwide searching is available, broken down by categories including business records, corporate tax forms, legal research resources, and professional licensing information.
 

Search SEC and business filings using the new Hoovers site: http://www.hoovers.com/free/


Find a business near this address-great for breaking news: http://www.infospace.com/info/neighbor.html
 
Find a toll free number for a person or business http://www.anywho.com/tf.html

Internet Address Finder - E-mail Directory http://www.iaf.net

Area code listing, by number http://www.bennetyee.org/ucsd-pages/area.html


Investigating Politicians
 Who is influencing my Congressman? www.fec.gov run by the federal election commission. You can search individual contributors, individual candidates or races. http://www.opensecrets.org-nonprofit/non-partisan site-crunches Federal Election commission figures to show you who is giving and receiving what from whom. Put in your zip code and find out who is donating to the presidential campaign.

State contributions-state races- http://www.followthemoney.org/

Who is giving what to whom in power—Politicalmoneyline-even has a search engine to investigate donors by name. Enter a zip code and you can find out who in that zip code donated to federal elections. This site is the site that monitors every move at the Federal Election Commission.   http://www.tray.com/fecinfo/

www.vote-smart.org -a nonprofit/non-partisan group- details how congressmen vote on bills and issues. Now they are tracking platform positions taken by candidates on state and federal levels. You can also track legislation-extremely useful site.

 FactCheck.org helps to fact check candidates, parties and election ads nationwide.  http://www.factcheck.org/default.html

GovTrack follows your elected federal officials, tracks legislation and is RSS ready to update you on whatever you want. http://www.govtrack.us/

Congress.Org Includes issue positions of Presidential candidates, state information on voter registration and upcoming elections, and links to Congressional races by state, with background information available on Congressional voting records.
http://www.congress.org/congressorg/e4

Electionline includes a reference guide to laws and regulations, and state and local election administration, as well as commentary on best practices and areas for electoral reform.
http://www.electionline.org/

Green Papers Facts, figures, tidbits and commentary on the U.S. election campaigns
http://www.thegreenpapers.com/

Politics1 Links to all aspects of elections http://www.politics1.com

Polls Online-public opinion and surveys from Gallup, news organizations and Pew http://www.people-press.org/otherpolls/
 PollingReport-tracks all sorts of new polls constantly http://www.pollingreport.com/


Charities and Non-Profits

 Charity Check-you need to know where all the money is going-every charity that takes in $25K has to file an I-990 form. They are the mother lode of information and they are open for your inspection. Go to your local charitable solicitations board, your secretary of state or, now, online to see these forms. 

A great site www.guidestar.com has almost a million of these forms on file. They are constantly being updated and soon will include millions of I-990 forms.  (Hint-when looking for a specific charity, put the name in quotes.)

Charity Navigator rates charities and non-profits. http://www.charitynavigator.org/


 The Better Business Bureau also has a rating service for charities called www.give.org



Who Owns that Website?  Search the ownership of any website in the world. Try this site called allwhois.com.  

Also, try http://www.networksolutions.com/cgi-bin/whois/whois
Also try http://www.samspade.org/t  if all you have is an ISP number, can trace backward to identify the user. Very useful in decoding who is posting to a listserv or bulletin board.


www.WatchThatPage.com  is a service that enables you to automatically collect new information from your favorite pages on the Internet. You select which pages to monitor, and WatchThatPage will find which pages have changed, and collect all the new content for you. The new information is presented to you in an email and/or a personal web page.

Unravel IP addresses, host or name servers to figure out who is writing or hosting what. This is a one-stop shopping center. http://www.networksolutions.com/cgi-bin/whois/whois
 

Product Safety Recall site by the Consumer Product Safety Commission. Alerts are listed as soon as they are announced by the federal government. www.Recalls.gov.  Includes downloadable video and interviews.  

New Easy to use Census site: http://www.censusscope.org/

Find out the basics about any city or town http://www.citytowninfo.com/

Census.gov vital facts- quick click for basic facts on any city, state or county http://www.census.gov

 FactFinder is the Census’ site that helps you get microspecific data, even map it. It is very easy to use. http://factfinder.census.gov/home/saff/main.html?_lang=en

SECinfo.com It is a free site that monitors Security and Exchange Commission filings.  The site will even send you an email when the company you are tracking files something new. Fantastic.

 Read the EPA drinking water inspections in every water district in America. http://www.epa.gov/safewater/dwinfo/index.html

Who is release toxic stuff in your community?  EPA has an easy to use tracking site. You can watch toxins, water, air pollution, land (dumping) and more. Just plug in a zip code, city, or state.  http://www.epa.gov/enviro/index.html

Online Polls-from political to topical polls, this site finds them and posts them daily http://www.pollingreport.com/

 
Tracking News Fast

1stHeadlines.com-a great journalism site.  http://www.1stheadlines.com  is a fast and easy to load site that summarizes the leading headlines for hundreds of newspapers and online news sites around the world.
 
A fantastic tool for watching local news coverage: http://www.topix.net/
Topix spiders yours and more than 3,000 other local news sites. Its users can enter one of your local ZIP codes and see a page showing all local news from you and your competitors.

SpeakWire-Listen to a Newspaper’s RSS podcast http://www.speakwire.com/

WatchingAmerica.com a daily collection of headlines from around the world, many of them from Arabic speaking countries, often very critical of the US. http://www.watchingamerica.com/

European news portal Newsnow-which searches nearly 10,000 news sites every 5 minutes.  Here is a collection of international news sites including tons of live streaming sites from around the world.  http://tv4all.com/portal.htm

Get a jumpstart on University studies and releases http://www.ascribe.org/

Encyclopaedia Britannica more than 70 newspapers and a directory of Web links, evaluated by Britannica editors. http://www.britannica.com/
Links to every known local newspaper in the United States  http://www.newspapers.com/usa_news.htm

 Highbeam free research http://www.highbeam.com/index.asp?homepage=y&ctrlInfo=Round18%3AMode18c%3ASR%3AHdr%2EHome

Top 99 Newspaper websites online-ranked by traffic http://www.top9.com/top99s/top99_newspapers.html

Newspaper front pages from around the world-updated daily http://www.pressdisplay.com/pressdisplay/viewer.aspx
http://www.newseum.org/todaysfrontpages/

Links to Most Popular magazines online http://newslink.org/mtopus.html

Very fast loading list of most major papers in US and Worldwide-use this when you are in a hurry  http://www.dailyearth.com/

Newspaper archives from Special Library Association. Search newspapers by state. Some of the archives are subscriptions, some are free. http://www.ibiblio.org/slanews/internet/archives.html

Spiders and skims from alternative papers http://www.alternet.org/

Collections of alt weeklies nationwide http://aan.org/gbase/Aan/publicationDirectory

Links to Business newspapers in the United States http://www.newspapers.com/results.asp?category=32

Links to International Newspapers indexed by country http://www.newspapers.com/country.htm

Links to religious newspapers worldwide http://www.newspapers.com/results.asp?category=512


Native American News websites
Indianz.com              Native Times     
Native American health issues site   Nativeweb.org    Yahoo Native News Index    Indian Country Today

A huge collection of special interest online journals
http://gort.ucsd.edu/newjour/a/
Middle East News    aljazeera in English - http://english.aljazeera.net/HomePage
Afghan Daily        Al-Ahram Weekly    Debka.com        Ha’aretz        
Indian Express        The Iranian        Jane’s Defense        Military.com         Stars & Stripes        Times of India

Blog Tracking

What are Blogs linking to? http://www.blogsnow.com/ Scans more than 100 blogs a minute and constantly updates.

Tons of blogs: Browse by Topic  Browse by Location

Blogs sorted by state http://www.globeofblogs.com/?x=location&region=8



Translation Tools
Translate almost any language into almost any other language.  If you are trying to read a Spanish language page in English, for example, try this: also http://www.freetranslation.com
and this site is a “real time translator” meaning you could have a conversation with a person who is speaking another language http://babelfish.altavista.com/
http://www.babblefish.com/babblefish/bfish_lang.htm
 

Polly Glotto- type in a word or a phrase and Polly will translate and even say your phrase in any of 13 languages. http://www.pollyglotto.com/index8.php

Google also has a very nice translation tool http://www.google.com/language_tools

Hotspot List find a public wireless (WiFi) hotspot by logging in and entering city, street, zip
http://www.wi-fihotspotlist.com/

Health News Sites

 CDC’s WONDER page. http://wonder.cdc.gov/ This is an interesting page chocked full of story entry points-I find ideas here all the time.

Easily compare state health statistics-Kaiser collection let’s you know how any state ranks on  infant mortality, percentage of insurance or uninsured population or percentage of population infected with HIV, just for example. This is a wonderful and easy to use database.

State Health Facts- on one website (by Kaiser) you can find out about health coverage and costs for every state, state by state listings for AIDS, Medicare, income, and more. http://www.statehealthfacts.org/

Kids Count-state by state data on the health and well-being of children. http://www.aecf.org/cgi-bin/cliks.cgi  includes ranks.

Mega health and medical site from the government  http://medlineplus.gov/

Nutrition stats for fast foods, recipes and such http://www.nutritiondata.com/

A Smallpox primer http://kaisernetwork.org/daily_reports/rep_index.cfm?DR_ID=15222


Health Facts-state by state including % uninsured, HIV-AIDS and more http://www.statehealthfacts.kff.org/

Healthwatch-topical health stories of the day http://www.cbsnews.com/sections/health/main204.shtml

Medscape-you choose the areas you want to search http://www.medscape.com/

Intelihealth-from Harvard http://www.intelihealth.com/IH/ihtIH?t=7228&p=~br,IHW|~st,333|~r,WSIHW000|~b,*|

Journal of the American Medical Association http://jama.ama-assn.org/

Dozens of Environment related websites http://www.health.gov/nhic/NHICScripts/Hitlist.cfm?Keyword=Environmental%20Health
Kids Health issues -updated daily- excellent and easy to use: http://www.kidshealth.org/

  Who is dying from what-The CDC's Morbidity and Mortality weekly report- http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/

Find any physician in the United States from AMA. http://www.ama-assn.org/iwcf/iwcfmgr206/aps?1168216196

Calculators

The coolest calculator/converter site I know of, converts everything from grams to ounces, you name it. http://www.megaconverter.com/mega2/
Cost of Living Calculator Uses the Consumer Price Index and is useful in comparing budgets, income, spending from one year to another. http://www.newsengin.com/neFreeTools.nsf/CPIcalc

How much did something cost years ago- a great primer http://www.gti.net/mocolib1/kid/foodfaq5.html

Online Conversion – tons of other calculators http://www.onlineconversion.com
everything from distance to weights and measurements wind chill.

Try this site for calculating percentages- (what is _% of __.)
http://www.onlineconversion.com/percentcalc.htm

Math calculators for journalists http://www.webmath.com/

Automatically converts numbers to Roman Numerals http://www.onlineconversion.com/roman_numerals_advanced.htm

How old is somebody in dog years? http://www.onlineconversion.com/dogyears.htm

Distance as the crow flies-worldwide calculator http://www.indo.com/distance/

Driving distance between two cities calculator: http://www.mapquest.com or http://www.onlineconversion.com/drivingdistance.htm

Investigating Aviation, Trains, Truck and Bus Crashes, Cruise Ships

 http://www.transtats.bts.gov/exit.asp?URL=http%3A//www.uscgboating.org/statistics/accident_stats.htm All federal statistics on deaths, injuries, accidents for rail, ships, planes, bikes, pedestrians, pipeline, trucking and highways

 A plane crashed in my area-I need information-quick-go to www.landings.com it helps to identify problems with airlines and with individual planes. This powerful site will give you pilot backgrounds, aircraft safety records, specific maintenance records of planes (if you have a tail number) and tons of other details. Get familiar with this one-you will use it. www.faa.gov is a helpful site too.

Fantastic resource for covering crashes  http://aviation-safety.net/index.shtml they often even have a schematic drawing of the crash site and quickly track the safety records of that kind of airliner.

 
 The NTSB site
 Database Query - interactive search capability for the NTSB database, updated daily; see the general instructions before using the form for the first time.
Monthly lists - accidents sorted by date, updated daily.
Completed investigations - periodically updated list of cases scheduled for release of probable cause.
Downloadable datasets - one complete dataset for each year beginning from 1982, updated monthly in Microsoft Access 95 MDB format; this FTP site also provides weekly "change" updates and complete documentation.
GILS record - complete description of the accident database, including definition of "accident" and "incident".
FAA incident database - complete information about incidents, including those not investigated by NTSB, is provided by the Federal Aviation Administration.

NTSB Accident Reports
NTSB Annual Review of Aircraft Accident Data
NTSB Aviation Accident Database
NTSB Most Recent Accidents /Older Accidents/Studies | Statistical

 Get pictures of thousands of commercial airplanes listed by N number: http://www.airliners.net/
Other aviation photo sites to check include; PlanePictures.Net, PlaneSpotting Network, JetPhotos.Net

The Federal Register-this is the official US Government notification site where all  advisories, alerts, notices and so on are listed daily.  Type in the name of the aircraft, for example, to see airworthiness advisories or mechanical advisories http://www.gpoaccess.gov/fr/index.html
Look up international registrations (Australia, UK, South Africa, Italy, Ireland, Japan and so on) http://www.landings.com/evird.acgi$pass*48271342!_h-www.landings.com/_landings/pages/search/reg-world.html

Look up Crash information by aircraft, registration number or date of event or crash http://www.airsafe.com/events/accbymod.htm

Real Time Flight Tracking - see where an airplane is during flight. A remarkable mapping system that is great when you have to meet someone at an airport.
http://www.cheaptickets.com/trs/cheaptickets/flighttracker/flight_tracker_home.xsl

Every commercial airport in the United States by city http://www.frequentflier.com/ffp-APO1D.htm

Airports of the world by city http://www.frequentflier.com/ffp-APO1I.htm
 Investigate Train Crashes.  You can try the National Transportation Safety Board but it can take many months and up to years to get real investigation information. The National Railroad Administration sometimes provides information faster and has 9 regional offices that do inspections, so it might be a better route to take after a crash http://safetydata.fra.dot.gov/officeofsafety/
They have an online site which is new, that allows you to look up crashes by date

NTSB’s Train Accident Investigation site http://www.ntsb.gov/railroad/railroad.htm
NTSB Railroad   Accidents | Studies
NTSB Pipeline   Accidents | Studies
NTSB Hazardous Materials Accidents | Studies
 Investigate the inspection background and crash history of a commercial trucking or bus line. Dot safety ratings list  http://www.safer.fmcsa.dot.gov/
You will need the federal DOT number of the vehicle involved.  It will look something like this: USDOT-246045  .You will usually find the number on the vehicle itself. Often on the door/drivers’ side.

American Bus Association: http://www.buses.org/safety/

NTSB Highway Accident investigations Accidents | Studies
 

Ships at sea-live display map http://www.sailwx.info/shiptrack/shiplocations.phtml


The NTSB ship accident/safety investigation site http://www.ntsb.gov/Surface/marine/marine.htm

Cruise Ship Schedules and Sailing information http://www.cms.udel.edu/ships/  (not a gov’t site.) The US Coast Guard conducts safety inspections of cruise ships. In fact, you can find
Inspections on virtually all passenger vessels. The link is http://cgmix.uscg.mil/psix/psix2/



Weather and Natural Disasters

 The mother lode of disaster planning contacts and information-   http://cbsnews.cbs.com/network/htdocs/digitaldan/disaster/disasters.htm

150 years of hurricane tracks from NOAA  http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2004/s2258.htm

One of the coolest parts of the site is that you can enter a zip code or a city and query historical storm tracks for that community.  So when a storm is heading for a location, you can find the history of storms to that location in a click or two. http://hurricane.csc.noaa.gov/hurricanes/

Coastal Population tool-this is a wonderful tool you can use to map how many people live on any coast line and what the population trend has been for that area. It is vitally important to predict evacuation size and damage estimates. Just pop in a state and county.  http://hurricane.csc.noaa.gov/hurricanes/

Real time imagery of storms, saffir-simpson hurricane scale explained and more resources http://hurricane.csc.noaa.gov/hurricanes/links.htm

Billion Dollar Weather Disasters-a page full of information on the worst storms http://lwf.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/reports/billionz.html

Regional Climate Centers http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/regionalclimatecenters.html

State Climatologists http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/aasc.html

Another Disaster collection-ham radio operators use this http://www.disastercenter.com/

A listing of major international disaster relief efforts going on
http://www.disasterrelief.org/

Volcano watch-real time space views of some of the world’s most active volcanoes from Michigan Tech http://www.ssec.wisc.edu/data/volcano.html

A library of every recorded weather event-county by county some data going back to the 1800’s. It is a remarkable tool http://www4.ncdc.noaa.gov/cgi-win/wwcgi.dll?wwEvent~Storms

Disaster Finder - A Who’s Who of disaster resources, from comets that could hit the earth to how to deal with animals when you have a big fire, earthquake or hurricane. http://disasterfinder.gsfc.nasa.gov/

A site fire Firefighters and EMT issues-excellent http://firehouse.com/

Airport maps, live traffic cams and traffic-road conditions updated constantly http://www.quickaid.com/

Live weather radar-every NEXRAD sweep in the country http://www.wunderground.com/radar/map.asp

Science.gov-a new science website that lists and finds reliable government science information http://www.science.gov/


 Crime/Courts

Find a sex criminal in any neighborhood. http://www.familywatchdog.us/

A listing of thousands of police departments http://www.usacops.com/

 A listing of virtually every police officer killed in the line of duty in Americ in the last 100 years.

Possibly the best collection of crime data sets on the web-includes international data too http://www.lib.msu.edu/harris23/crimjust/stats.htm#city

Crime Stats direct from the gov't.  A mega site includes everything from Interpol to DEA most wanted—you will use this one! http://www.usdoj.gov/criminal/oiafug/fugitives.htm

FBI most wanted list and photos : http://www.fbi.gov/mostwant/fugitive/fpphome.htm
The Journalist's Toolbox (http://www.journaliststoolbox.com), managed by journalist and former Northwestern University instructor Mike Reilly, includes some 15,000 links, from the sublime to the silly. Choose from a list of "beats.”  (http://www.journaliststoolbox.com/newswriting/crime.html).
Criminal Justice Journalists (http://www.reporters.net/cjj/) is a national association of crime, court and prison writers, editors and producers.
Legal news: outstanding site that links you to top stories involving courts, suits and issues.  Often provides original documents online http://news.findlaw.com/

Courts online-including state federal and appeals connections: http://www.ncsconline.org/D_KIS/info_court_web_sites.html#federal

Court sites-every state/many counties http://www.ncsconline.org/D_KIS/info_court_web_sites.html
America Most Wanted

Police Departments

Child Predators

Scanner Frequencies


Federal Courts online http://www.uscourts.gov/links.html

AboutTerrorism-a one stop website for journalists with Q and A about terrorism issues, groups and policy. http://cfrterrorism.org/home/
The website (http://www.policeforum.org) of the Police Executive Research Forum, a national association of law enforcement bosses from large cities and based in Washington, D.C., has convenient links to most important criminal justice agencies. PERF's site also has scores of web links to the departments of its members, as well as research reports on topics such as racial profiling.
The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press website (http://www.rcfp.org) offers several good tools for journalists, including a section on access to electronic records and a helpful state-by-state guide to shield laws and reporter privilege. The RCFP site offers information on access to public and private property for journalists, as well as a thorough FOIA primer. Its section entitled Tapping Officials' Secrets offers a state-by-state information guide.
Also, National Criminal Justice Reference Service searches 1,500 publications. http://www.ncjrs.org/search.html

Juvenile Court laws-a state by state guide: http://www.rcfp.org/juvcts/index.html
What are your rights as a reporter to get into public places and/or private places http://www.rcfp.org/places/

Hatewatch –monitors hate crimes http://www.tolerance.org/newsletter/hatewatch/

Campus crime stats from US Education Dept. http://ope.ed.gov/security/Search.asp

Prisoner Lookup for every state and many counties-one megasite http://www.prisonlegalnews.org/links/Doc&prisoner_lookup.htm

A listing of every state Corrections Department-many states now have “offender locators” and parole dates for prisoners. http://www.prisonpenpals.com/corrections.html

A website for Prison Administrators which includes hot topics-lots of story ideas http://www.corrections.com/news/index.html


This is a site that monitors Supreme Court and Appeals Courts matters-collects stories from around the country daily. http://legalaffairs.org/howappealing/
The site is run by attorney Howard Bashman of Philadelphia

Sports Specific

 A headline and link to sports pages in newspapers nationwide http://www.sportspages.com/  includes regional breakouts –another collection  http://www.ballparkguys.com/links/sportspages.html

 Bad Jocks is like The Smoking Gun only for sports http://www.badjocks.com/

A huge collection of Women Sports resources by sport http://fiat.gslis.utexas.edu/~lewisa/womsprt.html

Journal of Quantitative Analysis in Sports http://www.bepress.com/jqas/vol2/

A Basketball Rumor site http://www.hoopshype.com/

A Football Rumor Site http://www.ballparkguys.com/links/sportspages.html

NCAA Statistics page http://www.ncaa.org/stats/

 
Fall    Winter    Spring
Football    Men's Basketball    Baseball
Men's Soccer    Women's Basketball    Softball
Women's Soccer    Men's Ice Hockey    Men's Lacrosse
Women's Volleyball    Women's Ice Hockey    Women's Lacrosse
 
Archived Team-by-Team Final Statistics
(Search by student-athlete, coach or team)

More statistics than anybody could ever need: http://www.amstat.org/sections/sis/sports.html
Baseball Sites
Baseball-Reference.com All you really need
The Baseball Engineering Home Page
Baseball Statistics from CNN/SI
Japanese Baseball
John Skilton's Baseball Links
MLB History
MLB Rulebook
SABR: The Society for American Baseball Research
Sean Lahman's Baseball Archive
Total Baseball
Basketball
Current NBA Stats
NCAA Final Four
Cycling
Union Cycliste Internationale
Fencing
United States Fencing Association
Football
NFL History
NFL Statistics
Quarterback Rating Formula
Golf
golf.com Tournaments & Results
GolfWeb
Horse Racing
Breeders Cup Stats
Kentucky Derby Stats
Hockey
NHL Players' Association stats
Goalie Statistics
Olympics
Official Olympics Site
Soccer
Soccer Links
World Cup Soccer
Tennis
ATP Tour Player Statistics
WTA Tour Rankings
Volleyball
Volleyball Worldwide

Publications
Published articles dealing with sports statistics.
Sports Data
Links to sites containing data for several professional and amateur sports.
Sports Pages
A collection of websites with general news and information about sports. Also, a page of Official Team Websites for pro teams!
Statistics on the Web
Links to academic departments, conferences, employers and more!


Sports Statistics as a Career
Information about our most frequently asked question

A collection of ballparks and stadiums in America http://www.ballparks.com/

Database for NBA teams  http://www.databasebasketball.com/

A collection of significant golf courses worldwide http://www.golfclubatlas.com/

A collection of surfing information including webcams  http://www.surfline.com/home/index.cfm  

An exhaustive pro football reference page going back decades http://www.pro-football-reference.com/

The exhaustive pro hockey database site http://www.hockeydb.com/

Website that monitors high school and college scouting for sports http://www.scout.com/  includes some video

Website that monitors college recruiting http://www.rivals.com/

  The watering Hole for sports journalists to chat http://www.sportsjournalists.com/


Military Resources

Google’s government search engine  http://www.google.com/unclesam

List of US Naval ships mailing addresses from the US Navy http://www.chinfo.navy.mil/navpalib/ships/lists/ship-fpo.html

Military.com's personnel finder

News about chemical, biological and nuclear weapons from Global Security Newswire http://www.nti.org/d_newswire/issues/2005_5_6.html

Department of Defense site http://www.defenselink.mil/

Jane’s Defense Weekly-an authoritative voice outside the government http://jdw.janes.com/

The Pentagon http://www.defenselink.mil/pubs/pentagon/pentagoninfo.html

Department of Defense Almanac a vast resource with links to all branches of the military, some of which you have never heard of.  http://www.defenselink.mil/pubs/almanac/

Special search engine that just looks at 1-million military pages  http://www.searchmil.com


Economics
You can use this handy calculator to compare the costs of living in U.S. and selected Canadian cities. Find demographic information from government statistics bureaus in Australia or Canada.

The definitive one-stop source for information about Latin American nations can be found by visiting LANIC at the University of Texas.

Download population, housing or economic data for any community in the U.S. from the Census Bureau.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics has made a variety of useful national economic data available through its site. The "Economy at a Glance" section offers monthly employment, inflation and growth numbers for the past 14 months. The "Data" section offers access to more detailed BLS timeseries employment data.

Find an expert to help you on a business story http://www.gehrung.com/biznet/biznet.html

Examine information about the nation's taxpayers from the Internal Revenue Service.

 The Population Reference Bureau provides population resources and world population data.


Useful and Fun
 This site collects stories and data about amusement ride accidents and deaths. http://www.rideaccidents.com/

A site where people post pictures from cell phones or their personal collections. Includes sorting by tags/topics  http://www.flickr.com/

About.com-if you are starting from scratch on a subject and need to find out about it fast, this is a great way to start.  http://www.about.com

Very useful calendar site-what is the date of Easter two years from now? How many days are there between this date and that date and so on. http://www.timeanddate.com/calendar/

Create an FOI letter to most government agencies with a few clicks http://www.rcfp.org/foi_letter/generate.php

The 100 Most Misspelled Words used by journalists http://www.yourdictionary.com/library/misspelled.html

The 100 Most Often Mispronounced Words http://www.yourdictionary.com/library/mispron.html

Find a rhyme. Type in a word and you get results instantly http://www.rhymezone.com/

Find out what acronyms and abbreviations stand for http://www.acronymfinder.com/

News for Nerds-Slashdot-believe me, this is the place that geeks get their news about web stuff http://slashdot.org/

Cnet-another Internet front edge site which is a little less nerdy than Slashdot-always out front on stories  http://www.news.com/

Iping tool-will call you and remind you of appointments, wakeup calls, will give you a wakeup call and read you news headlines.  You program it.  http://www.iping.com

The most popular search words on the web-ranked weekly by Lycos http://50.lycos.com/

Search engine that searches thousands of full text books online http://www.searchebooks.com/

Who is linked to whom on the web http://www.linkpopularity.com/

The Lost Remote-all about convergence http://www.lostremote.com/
Editor and Publisher Magazine http://www.editorandpublisher.com/editorandpublisher/index.jsp

Journalism Ethics Guidelines-Written by Poynter’s Steele and Tompkins for RTNDF http://www.rtndf.org/ethics/ethicsguidelines.shtml

Investigative Reporters and Editors (IRE) http://www.ire.org/
also try http://workingreporter.com by Jonathan Olsen

Background information on any city or town in the US  http://www.epodunk.com/

Online Maps from National Geographic You can put in just about any city in the world and get a map of it, even street maps. There are also historical maps, railroad maps, battlefield maps  Check it out

Government agencies: There are several bipartisan and respected sources of analysis in the federal government. For budgetary issues, the Congressional Budget Office (http://www.cbo.gov).

For management issues, the General Accounting Office (http://www.gao.gov). CBO and GAO sites are both searchable.

Theme Park Insider- a website that monitors theme park safety http://www.themeparkinsider.com/accidents/

The American Fact finder-from the US Census Bureau http://factfinder.census.gov/servlet/BasicFactsServlet

Can We Tape? A state by state listing of laws about how and when it is legal for you to tape a phone conversation or an undercover conversation from Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press http://www.rcfp.org/taping/index.html

Cyberjournalist.net MSNBC’s Jonathan Dube’s site includes tons of search engines, online news and journalist resources http://www.cyberjournalist.net/

In some states you can search vital records such as birth and death online http://www.vitalrec.com/  some of the records are for pay, but can be worth it if you do not have time to wait for government agencies to respond, and often government searches cost you money too.  So online can actually be cheaper.
 The Smoking Gun specializes in finding actual documents from court filings, government archives and FOI requests http://www.thesmokinggun.com/

6,000 Live Cameras around the world  http://www.leonardsworlds.com/camera.html

TinyURL.com The site header says, “Are you sick of posting URLs in emails only to have it break when sent causing the recipient to have to cut and paste it back together? Enter a URL into the text field and the site creates a tiny URL that will not break in email postings and never expires.”

    Hottest Words on the web The Lycos 50 and Yahoo’s Buzz List  

What is everybody else looking at on the web? http://www.metaspy.com you can watch what key words other people are putting in-live.  Refreshes every 15 seconds.  Includes a filtered and unfiltered version.  Choose carefully, the unfiltered version is no-holds-barred and gets pretty weird.

How much do people working in any occupation earn? See the Bureau of Labor Statistics charts

Day Care Inspections-may states put these online, searchable by facility and owner http://199.250.30.131/childcare/provider/providersearch.aspx

Terrafly-fly over and zoom in on any address. http://terrafly.fiu.edu/

Investigate businesses-use the Better Business Bureau site to investigate their standing with BBB http://search.bbb.org/search.html

I need an expert NOW-http://www.profnet.com/- 11,000 professors listed by areas of expertise, emails and phone numbers. These experts WANT to help that is why they signed up to be on profnet. Here is some advice on how journalists use profnet. http://www.poynter.org/column.asp?id=32&aid=66335

Rapdict a dictionary for rap words and lyrics. http://rapdict.org/

Reporter.org: Who is John Doe? Investigative Tools From the Duff Wilson (Seattle Times) Reporter’s Desktop, this is a simple list of resources you can access to get personal information about almost anyone in the United States. It is a fantastic tool to learn how to systematically investigate anyone.

Other expert sites    
Allexperts.com     Ask a Linguist           Ask A Reporter        Ask Jeeves Answer Point
Ask Joan of Art (Smithsonian)        Ask the Experts (refdesk)    AskMe.com     
Capitol Questions             Captive.com:Ask The ExpertExpertCentral       Experts Exchange Pitsco's Ask an Expert Page
A nice collection of specialized search engines http://www.rbbi.com/links/sengine.htm
Encyclopedia of Computers     Encyclopedia of Mythology
Encyclopedia of Philosophy    Encyclopedia of Religion        Encyclopedia of Science


Junk Science and Hoax Busters
Purportal.com – a one stop shopping center to search for myths and legends  http://www.purportal.com/

Archeological Hoaxes: http://www.syntac.net/hoax/archforg.php

Computer Virus Hoaxes: http://www.vmyths.com

Don't Spread That Hoax: http://www.nonprofit.net/hoax/default.htm

Famous Hoaxes: http://www.nonprofit.net/hoax/infamy.html

Health Hoax: http://www.healthcentral.com/Centers/OneCenter.cfm?Center=Internet_Hoax_Watch

Junk Science: http://www.junkscience.com

Myths and Legends: http://pubpages.unh.edu/%7Ecbsiren/myth.html

Skeptic's Dictionary: http://skepdic.com

Urban Legends: http://www.snopes.com

UFOs: http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Corridor/8148

Viruses, Worms and Trojan Horses: http://www.sarc.com/avcenter  


For-Pay Sites

Lexis-Nexis (http://www.lexis-nexis.com) -- The journalists' survival site for archived stories and clippings. The site also, for a fee, gives you government records and civil court

AutoTrackXP this is a favorite among investigative reporters and often is worth the price if you need the information fast. (http://www.autotrack.com/) -- more than 4 billion public records, including names and addresses, vehicle registrations, drivers license information, business reports, corporate and business information, booking and arrest information, criminal records, trademarks, bankruptcies, phone numbers, liens and judgments, property ownership and professional licenses.

DataQuick (http://www.dataquick.com) -- Sells real estate information online including valuation, sales, ownership records and titles.  A lot of this information is available free through your county clerk’s office but this is fast. You pay for speed.

VitalChek http://www.vitalchek.com/  You can buy birth, death, marriage and divorce papers through these guys from the states.  Of course you could go directly to the states but again you are paying for speed.