Racism and progress

One big issue in the world is racism and how to fight it.

I was amazed at the racism in the Dominican Republic. And I have known for some time the feelings of racial superiority by the Chinese. I saw how Shanghainese treated African exchange students. (Very humiliating.)

For Americans who have not had the overseas experience, this story (China's black pop idol exposes her nation's racism) and others like it could provide a good measure about racism and discrimination in our own country. We could look at how and why changes have occurred in the States. (After all it never hurts to challenge opinions and conventional wisdom.)

Another place to look for story ideas

For a long time I have loved the Census Bureau as a source for background info and ideas for stories. With the holidays coming up, there are plenty of stories possible from the data the Census Bureau has.

Here is a link to some basic information.

How a Denver station covered "Balloon Boy"

Al Tompkins at Poynter interviewed the news director at KUSA-TV, the station that broke the story about the 6-year old who supposedly climbed into the basket of a balloon just outside Denver.

From this interview it looks as if it took some real convincing to get the station to believe the "lost boy" in a balloon story was real.

KUSA-TV News Exec Explains Station's Balloon Boy Coverage

Money makes the world go 'round

Story ideas pop up in the strangest places.

Transparency International looked at 180 countries and came out with its latest report on corruption in the world.

Go to my blog to see a few choice comments and to get all the links to look over the 500 page document.

So how does this fit in with students and student journalists in the United States?

To begin with, the U.S. is no angel. We came in below Canada (#9) at #18. And seven other countries are less likely top pay bribes than the U.S.

But reporters could look at the cost of corruption and corrupt practices. The could look at:

• What rules and regulations are in place to prevent corruption in the bidding process to do business with the university.
• What local laws are on the books to prevent corruption in city, county and state purchases.
• Have there been any cases of corruption or questionable dealings in university or local government contracting.

A lot of this will require use of the freedom of information act. Good exercise for the students.

BTW, Chile (#23) was praised for enacting whistle-blower and freedom of information laws. The TI said these laws are a big help in fighting corruption.

How successful has the use of whistle blower or FOI laws been in finding corrupt practices?

Good hunting!

Getting data where you can

I just posted a story idea blog item on the DC SPJ web site. It's all about using the Census Bureau data to build good stories.

http://www.spjdc.org/node/13507

You might want to consider inviting a person from the Census Bureau to explain to your students how to really mine the Bureau's databases.

Deadline: A history

Publisher, scolding the editorial staff for the paper being late one day:

“Do you know where deadline comes from? It comes from prison. If the guards saw you cross the deadline, you were shot.”

Herdict: What is and isn't accessible

A while back Tom Crampton wrote about a website that tests accessibility of other web sites. The site, Herdict harnesses the reporting power of the entire Internet to see what sites are being blocked in what countries.

To no ones' surprise, I am sure, China and Iran lead the way.

For example, in the past week FACEBOOK received eight inaccessible reports. Five were from China.

YouTube had 15 inaccessible reports. Here China led with three of the reports, followed by Indonesia and the United States (2 each), Egypt, France, Israel, India, Morocco, Malaysia, Portugal and Tuvalu with one each.

Granted some of those reports may have been because of network glitches. But the overall pattern is that China leads the way with the most sites made inaccessible to Internet users.

If you are a traveler, you should think seriously about joining the Herdict herd. I regularly send in reports from Brazil (a very open place).

The more we know about how and where information is being denied, the more we can report on it. Download the browser add-in here.