What’s New
What’s New
Editor’s note: Here are some significant tools and sites we’ve added to the Toolbox in the last few weeks.
Markkula Center: Guidelines for the Ethical Use of Generative AI on Campus
Sketching the Field of AI Tools for Local Newsrooms
Wiseone
Summarize any article in seconds.
Chips App: Create Satellite Chips
An interactive web app for creating Landsat/other imagery chips for any location around the globe. The app was built using streamlit, geemap, and Google Earth Engine. Developed by Ishaan Jhaveri and Yoni Nachmany of The New York Times, the tool scrapes coordinates from a data file to grab available satellite pictures of your sites of interest. Just upload a KML or GeoJSON file.
Climate TRACE
Independent greenhouse gas emissions tracking. Explore the map and download the data.
News Product Resource Library
The Resource Library was developed in partnership with the Google News Initiative to create ethical and sustainable digital media businesses around the world. Topics include leadership development, diversity, tech, product marketing/strategy, business models and more.
Google for Creators: Web Stories
Create photo and video stories much like Instagram stories.
GIJN: How to use Satellite Imagery in Forensic Investigations
Runway
AI-powered video editor.
Resound
AI-powered podcast and audio editor. Great for removing extra words.
Reflect
A note-taking app with several AI integrations, like a GPT-4 AI assistant and a Whisper AI voice transcriber. You can record a voice note ramble, have the AI assistant turn it into an article outline, then have it rephrase your writing when you get stuck.
Open Contracting Partnership Data Registry
Helps you find and access public procurement datasets that are available in the OCDS format. You can access data from over 50 publishers from around the world as compiled releases with the latest value of each field. Each source comes with information to help you understand what data fields are part of the datasets and if it includes documents.
Beginner’s Prompt Handbook: ChatGPT for Local News Publishers
Joe Amditis of the Center for Cooperative Media has created a new ebook to help publishers with the AI tool. The book offers specific examples on how to write good prompts and unexpected use cases for newsrooms.
Midjourney Prompt Book
A database of prompts to create cool visualizations using the AI tool.
Adobe Firefly
Has some cool features aimed at solving problems for creatives and visual journalists: AI video editing, 3D modeling, text-to-image, photo editing and more. Be careful with ethics when using this tool on news photographs.
MoneyinPolitics.wtf
Aims to be the biggest dictionary of campaign-finance jargon.
Investigate.ai
Practical data science tools for journalists.
Gist Mobile Search
Get quick cards of visual summaries with search stories. The web brought to life, not hidden behind links Powerec by NeevaAI.
Legitimate
Centralize all your work, processes, tools and files into one platform, specifically designed for journalists. Save valuable time by having everything you need to write your stories in one place. All students that sign up will have free access to our tool suite for life.
Muck Rack: 2023 State of Journalism Report
Caregiving Coverage Style Guide
Journalists should avoid “ageist” language that depicts older adults in offensive, dismissive, unflattering, or incorrect ways. These might be terms such as “frail,” “doddering,” or “over the hill.” The New York & Michigan Solutions Journalism Collaborative, a coalition of universities and news partners in these two states, has developed this guide to help.
GIJN: 10 Investigative Questions to Ask When Covering a Natural Disaster
Prison Newspaper Project Directory
A first-of-its-kind digital directory of operational prison publications that servse as a living document to catalogue prison reporting over time. A dedicated subsection of the project republishes standout articles from prison newspapers nationwide, most of which do not operate their own websites.
For more training videos, visit our YouTube page.
ChatGPT
Developed by OpenAI in late 2022, the tool interacts in a conversational way. The dialogue format makes it possible for ChatGPT to answer followup questions, admit its mistakes, challenge incorrect premises, and reject inappropriate requests. Still in Beta and you can offer feedback to them on Discord. Drawbacks: Slow and it doesn’t cite sources (yet). Struggles with anything after 2021. But the tool has great potential in search.
AI Tools for Local Newsrooms
From PAI, an AI nonprofit that partners with journalism organizations.
Press Freedom Tracker: Incidents Database
A searchable and downloadable database from the US Press Freedom Tracker of attacks on journalists.
Committee to Protect Journalists Video: How to Prepare to Cover a Demonstration
Simpler Story
Simpler Story is a no-code platform for data journalists, that lets anyone build a story with rich and interactive data visualizations, in minutes.
Makkula Center for Applied Ethics: Ethical Questions About Generative AI
Repurpose.io
Tool for automating workflows. Good for autoposting social media.
Synthesia
Create a video from plain text in minutes. Good for creating a talking avatar
Murf
Text-to-speech tool
Nordis: Fact-Checking Tools Database
The database, which was conceived at a meeting during Global Fact 9 in Oslo, contains a list of tools connected to various parts of the fact-checking process, including the identification and verification of claims, as well as the distribution of fact-checks. The database was compiled by NORDIS member Laurence Dierickx (UiB) by joining a labelled dataset collected by the SCAM project at Oslo Metropolitan University with a dataset collected by the NORDIS UiB team.
The Journalist’s Resource Tipsheet: Don’t Say ‘Prove’: How to Report on the Conclusiveness of Research Findings
This tipsheet from Harvard explains why it’s almost always inaccurate for a journalist to report that a research study or group of studies proves anything. It also offers reporters and editors tips for getting it right.
The Open Notebook Tipsheet: Designing Science Graphics
Flashpoint: OSINT Tools Library
Incubator for Media Education and Development Lab
Site includes tools and open datasets on issues around the world.
GIJN: Annual Transparency Index – Increased Violence Globally
Artificial Intelligence in Local News: A Survey of US Newsrooms’ AI Readiness
Download a free .PDF of The Associated Press’ groundbreaking report that provides important insights into local news outlets’ understanding of artificial intelligence and their readiness to use AI to meet their journalism and business needs. The report is based on survey results from nearly 200 newsrooms across all 50 states and more than two dozen in-depth interviews with local news leaders. Print, radio, television and digital outlets are represented, as well as commercial and nonprofit operations. In addition to demonstrating a readiness to adopt AI and automation technologies, the report outlines what local news providers need to drive technological innovation.
Better News
Better News is a project of the American Press Institute and the Knight-Lenfest Local News Transformation Fund, a joint initiative of the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and The Lenfest Institute for Journalism. It is designed to serve three purposes: (1) to collect, curate and operate as a central repository of best practices in the craft of journalism and the challenge of journalism sustainability; (2) to provide strategic guidance on the most important issues facing news organizations, particularly local, regional and metropolitan newspapers; and (3) to share important lessons from participants of the Knight-Lenfest Newsroom Initiative.
LittleSis.org
A grassroots watchdog network connecting the dots between the world’s most powerful people and organizations.Its free database is a who-knows-who at the heights of business and government. Follow a candidate’s connections to lobbyists, PACs, donors, etc.
Best Gear for Mobile Video Journalism and Mobile Filmmaking for TV
Dimensions of Difference Guide
From Trusting News and Spaceship Media, this downloadable guide is “designed to support your newsroom in creating better content by helping you to identify, understand and talk about your own differences internally.”
The League of Women Voters: The Decline of Local News and Its Impact on Democracy
Reuters Institute at Oxford: How Publishers are Learning to Create and Distribute News on TikTok
Read/download this in-depth report from the Reuters Institute from December 2022.
AlternativeTo
Type in a name of a piece of paid software and the site will give you a free alternative.