Looming Deadlines for Journalistic Slackers vs Movie Quotes

I'm pretty well-suited to be a journalist, I think, because I'm a huge slacker and I procrastinate like nobody's business. Only when I have a looming deadline do I really kick into gear.

"This is not a hand-holding sort of exercise," Dr. Baltrip said of the semester-ending project that will be the culmination of all that we've learned in Computer-Assisted Reporting class.

She gave us a sheet about "birthing" a project and it says "write with authority." I would like to think that every time I write, I write with authority...just like I speak with conviction.



We're coming down to the wire now, as the draft of the draft of my main story is due next Thursday, April 22nd. Like O-Ren Ishi in Kill Bill, "Now's the F#*&ing time!" Or, to quote a slightly different film, "Get busy livin, or get busy dyin."

By the end of this weekend I hope to have all e-mail interviews submitted and a schedule of times for the audio interviews I have with local musicians on the subject of sexism in the music industry.

I'll be editing those bad boys in either Audacity or Adobe Audition, which is something I quite enjoy.

Let's do this.

Everyone Has A Paper Trail

Important information from Dr. Baltrip, "Everyone has a paper trail. Everyone."

And you can believe that. Nothing gets done anymore without a million forms to fill out and information to enter.

Budgets are a huge source of information if you know how to read them.

There are lots of institutions from which to get information. Here are a few of them:

The SEC

The FCC

The Government Printing Office

The CDC

The FDA

The CIA World Fact Book















Jack Ryan would approve.

The Census

The National Center for Educational Statistics

US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission

NOAA.gov

Here are a few more sites, not government related, who use the freedom of information act and provide access to institutional information:

Guide Star, which is a non-profit search

The Smoking Gun

Crimetime

Black Book Info

White Pages

Search Systems, a public records directory

Flight Aware allows you to track airline flights