Talk for the Ohio State University student chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists on February 21, 2013. Covers tools for managing information overload and workflow, tools for verifying information online and concludes with a section on other interesting apps and tools.

1. Apps for
Journalists
OSU SPJ Student Chapter
Feb. 21, 2013
Adam Schweigert
Twitter: @aschweig
E-mail: aschweigert@gmail.com

2. 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

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

33. 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)

39. 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?

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

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

45. Verifying Online Information
• Photos
– Tineye (tineye.com)
– Google Reverse Image Search
(images.google.com)
– EXIF Data and other embedded information
(fotoforensics.com/)

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

50. Verifying Online Information
• Tweets and Social Media Posts
– When was the account created?
(whendidyoujointwitter.com)

52. 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?

54. Verifying Online Information
• Websites
– Domain lookup (whois.domaintools.com) to
see who owns the site

56. 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

58. 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

59. Advanced Search Operators Cheat Sheet:

60. 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

68. Social Curation

72. News Reading Apps

81. Other Tools

84. THANK YOU
Adam Schweigert
Twitter: @aschweig
E-mail: aschweigert@gmail.com