apps for journalists

Apps for JournalistsOSU SPJ Student Chapter

Feb. 21, 2013

Adam SchweigertTwitter: @aschweig

E-mail: [email protected]

Me• Currently:

– Director of Technology at the Investigative News Network

– Founder of my own consultancy, Media Toybox– Learning to play banjo

• Previously: – Director of Strategy at Mindset Digital– Director of Digital at WOSU Public Media (NPR/PBS)– Director of Digital at Indiana Public Media (NPR/PBS)– Grad school at Indiana University– Undergrad at Ohio State

This Presentation• Managing Information Overload• Verifying Online Information• Other Apps and Tools• Your Favorite Apps and Q&A

Putting it together• Morning

– Various News Site Homepages, Blogs and Aggregators– Google Reader– Daily News E-mails– Add interesting stuff to Buffer

• Throughout the day– Check Twitter (hourly-ish)– Read and share shorter, timely articles– Save longer articles to Pocket

• Evenings and Weekends– Read saved articles in pocket– Dead tree media (books, magazines, Sunday NYT)

Verifying Online Information• General– Assume everything is fake until proven

otherwise– Is it too good to be true?– Did you check Snopes? – Google any related terms + hoax, scam,

fraud, etc.–Who was the first person who posted it?

What else can you find out about them and their possible motives?

– Can you get someone to talk offline?

Verifying Online Information• Photos– Tineye (tineye.com)

Verifying Online Information• Photos– Tineye (tineye.com)– Google Reverse Image Search

(images.google.com)


(images.google.com)– EXIF Data and other embedded

information (fotoforensics.com/)


(images.google.com)– EXIF Data and other embedded information

(fotoforensics.com/)– Compare with previous photos of that location, use

Google Earth and weather reports from the date and time the photo was allegedly taken to see if anything seems out of place

– Has the photo been edited? Pay particular attention to shadows and reflections and look for tool marks from editing programs

Verifying Online Information• Tweets and Social Media Posts–When was the account created?

(whendidyoujointwitter.com)

Verifying Online Information• Tweets and Social Media Posts–When was the account created?

(whendidyoujointwitter.com)–What do they typically tweet/post? Any

sudden changes?–Who do they follow? Who follows them? If

they’re @replying other people, who? Can you get one of them to talk offline?

– Do the timestamps and geotags of the questionable tweets make sense?

Verifying Online Information• Websites–Domain lookup

(whois.domaintools.com) to see who owns the site



– Internet Archive (archive.org/) to tell how long the site has been around, if it used to be something else



– Internet Archive (archive.org/) to tell how long the site has been around, if it used to be something else

– Use Google advanced search operators such as link:domain.com to see who else is linking to that site

Advanced Search Operators Cheat Sheet: googleguide.com/print/adv_op_ref.pdf

Verifying Online Information• Websites– Domain lookup (whois.domaintools.com) to

see who owns the site– Internet Archive (archive.org/) to tell how

long the site has been around, if it used to be something else

– Use Google advanced search operators such as link:domain.com to see who else is linking to that site

– Is there an about section, footer information or contact information you can use to find out who is behind the site and get in touch with them?

Social Curation

News Reading Apps

Other Tools

THANK YOUAdam Schweigert

Twitter: @aschweigE-mail: [email protected]