Last post

The semester is winding down, and so is the blog. This is the last one, and honestly, I'm excited to get back to my personal blog. So, I suppose I should wrap up things nice and tidy, but I've always been really bad at conclusions. I once wrote a 255 page novel (single spaced), and when I couldn't find a proper ending for it, I just quit. That should give you some idea as to how bad I really am at this sort of thing. So I'm not even going to try. We're just going to treat this blog post as any other, and when it's over, you'll just know ... It's over.

I never got the map thing with Caspio to work. I'll try again in class tomorrow, but after that, I'm devoting my time to writing a memo about everything I've done this semester. I suppose I'll start with the trip to Whiteville, Edna, the Whiteville Police Department, then expand to David Nobles and the sheriff's department. Then I'll go through my prototypes, from the two hard copies I made to the spreadsheet, the map, the Caspio database and the failed map of Caspio data. 

I don't know where the project will go from here. I think we went above what the newspapers wanted, and that makes me think a lot of the project won't ever be used. But that's OK. It was a learning process if nothing more. Rather than the focus being on what the website should look like, most of our focus ended up being on how to obtain records. The people at the paper seem to be OK with how they obtain records, and I doubt their processes will change. Had we been able to work more closely with reporters like Bob High, I think we would have started out ahead. We basically started from scratch, and that hurt us. We ran into a lot of problems with getting the records, and the website never actually developed. I hope that these newspapers one day develop a more useful website, but it's going to take more work than what we were able to do in 15 weeks. 

I sure hope my memo is more helpful than this post. It's a bit of a downer.

Prototype #4 ... if it works

Click here to load this Caspio Online Database app.

I just put the HTML into this blog, and I'm not at all impressed. When I switched back to compose view, it just said exactly what it says above. I expected the database to actually be ON the page in some form. I went back and read the HTML, and I was even less impressed. They threw in some javascript to make it look fancy, but other than that, I could have written that code without their help. It's incredibly basic.


I'm going to publish this post and see what happens with these links. I'll come back to report soon.

Oh dang. I take back what I said about that fancy javascript. That's what makes the table actually appear ... In compose view, it just says, "Click here to load this Caspio Online Database app." But once it's published, that javascript kicks in.

I didn't see a place in the HTML to change the width of the table. Obviously that's important. I assume the javascript would need to be manipulated, but since I'm basically illiterate in that, I can't tell. I take that back too ... The table width is fine now. No manipulation needed.

This search form is very similar to the one we created in class today. I changed it so that the drop-down menu would actually read correctly. Other than that, I left it the same. Prototype #4 is done now. Number 5 may be tricky. I'm going to create a Google map of my Caspio data. Thanks to Ben, avid reader of my blog and Caspio expert, I have a couple of hints on how to get started. I have to work on a paper before I can begin the map, but it should be done by the end of the week. 

(I just realized that the search form would work better if it actually gave me results. Any tips?)

Still working on Caspio

I haven't made a lot of progress over the break; granted, I haven't tried a whole lot. Right after our class Tuesday, my philosophy professor assigned a paper and two books for us to read over break, so I focused most of my energy on that and a Turkey coma. (I also succeeded in getting another job offer, so overall I felt successful even though Caspio has been trying to bring me down.)


I just posted to the discussion board about my progress, but I'll quickly talk about it here. (My mom is just finishing dinner, and that means I have minimal time to write.) I have made all of my tables, and I've input all the data into them. I suppose I've stopped there because the next step is more difficult … I don't know exactly what I'm doing.


All of the tables have to be connected into some sort of database … Obviously. I'm assuming one of those eight tutorials can help with that. I watched all of them, but since I wasn't working on a table when I watched them, I don't remember a lot of the information. I'm going to go through and figure out which one can help, but if anyone already has some information on this, I'm totally open to that. (I learn very poorly from video tutorials. Throughout college, they have been my least favorite form of learning.) Once I can figure out how to link these tables, we should have another prototype.


I also have another, slightly unrelated, question. Can a Google map be made from a Caspio database? Because that is the direction I want to go if possible. If no one knows, I'm going to figure it out once I've finished with the database.


I have other information that I want to put in here, but dinner is ready. I'll come back once I'm back in Durham … It will be later tonight. I'm assuming no one will read this between now and then anyway.

UPDATE: I'm back! Here is an e-mail from David Nobles that I wanted to share. This was his response to the phone message I left him. I'm not sure what all of it means, but he answered all of my questions so that's a start.

Chelsea,
The name of our vendor is Southern Software.  They are located in Southern
Pines (800 842 8190).  The product is called Sheriff-Pak. They would have to
be the one to tell you about different formats.  What I have been sending
you is from pre-designed reports built into the software.  Any extracts
other than those would probably have to be built by Southern and would have
to be limited as to the content, i.e., public vs. investigative information.
I don't know if that type of report has been requested from them in the past
or if it would have an associated cost.

The individual reports are e-mailed daily one at the time to Bob right now.
There is a media report that contains all of the reports for a specified
time frame but it is not as detailed.  

I'll see if I can find the UCR crime codes already listed somewhere so we
don't have to recreate the list.

David 

Caspio and failure

I've started using Caspio. I was doing really well for a while. Then I ran into a somewhat serious problem. For offenses, many of the reports list several offenses. As the table I made exists now, there is only room for one offense. I need to figure out whether I should add more fields or if I can put them into one field. Also, there are actually several codes that I need a code key for. Originally I put the addresses (including city, state and zip code) all into one field, but now I'm second-guessing that. And the way Caspio makes you enter the time is really pissing me off. You have to put both the date and the time (including the seconds), which makes the date field basically useless. Basically Caspio has been stopped until I find a couple of solutions for minor problems that are causing a huge headache.

In other news, I've experienced my first real (temporary) failure in this class. I called David Nobles today. He was busy. I asked him to call me back. He never did. I sent him an e-mail. He didn't respond. I'm a little surprised because he was so helpful last time. Tomorrow I had planned to be in Boone all day; I want to visit Samaritan's Purse to keep my connections fresh. Even though I have a job now, I eventually want to move back to SP. Then Thursday is Thanksgiving, meaning it will be Friday before I can try him again. And with Friday being the day after Thanksgiving, I'm doubtful that David will find much time to talk. We'll see, I suppose.

Now that I'm home, blogging isn't really on the top of my list of things to do. Thus I'm ending a little quicker than I normally would. I just want to sit and watch the news with my dad. Then, once he goes to sleep, I have to read two books and write two papers before class begins again Monday. This break, the last one of my college career, is already busier than I want it to be.

A plethora of things

I'm hardly sure where to start. I've been talking to Bob High, the crime reporter, recently. I suppose I should give updates on that first. My concern was that when I started putting information into the spreadsheet (I finished one copy), I noticed that all of the reports from the sheriff's department only included the first page. My reports from the police department had both pages, so I e-mailed Bob about it. This was his response:

"I think the back page (page 2) was withheld by agency -- The front side is public, but the back page isn't."

I'm suspicious about the truth of that statement, so I told him I was going to check into it and see what I found. I realize I may be overstepping my boundaries a little, but it's time to cut the small town reporter silliness and get down to business. I haven't checked into it yet, but that's going to be put on the back burner while I sort through everything else.

Although this order doesn't make much sense, next I want to share the crime map that I made today. I'm just going chronologically here. It's based on the spreadsheet that I compiled, and although it's far from perfect, it's a start. Unfortunately I COULD NOT get the HTML code for embedding ... I even made another map and couldn't figure out how to do it. So you'll have to click on the link. I don't like the way the information appears in the bubbles. It looks disorganized. I'd like to find a way to include all of that information somewhere but just have the basics in the bubble. Is that even possible? Either way, prototype three is finished. Next we'll start on the hard parts.


After class, I called the Columbus County Sheriff's Office. I was transferred to Captain David Nobles, and he was fairly helpful. He sent me the media log details in an Excel Spreadsheet and as a snapshot file. The spreadsheet is a little difficult to read as is, but it's proof that this stuff does exist as a database, and that the people at the sheriff's department know how to export it correctly. I wish I could actually attach a file to a blog ... But I can't. While talking to David, he told me that they store all of their files in the records management system, which is the same thing that Edna at the police department told me.

He also told me that he and Bob High have been talking, and Bob basically only wants three parts of the information for online activity - location, incident and one other thing that he couldn't remember. Obviously I've gone beyond that, and obviously that's not what the newspaper wants. Should I just consult Bob and see what he wants? It's seems useless for me to find ALL of this information when it's just going to go to waste. I think that perhaps our class aspires higher than the newspaper, and that's not surprising. We go to Carolina. We typically try to do things just a little bit better than the guy beside us. In this case, I'm starting to question whether it's worth it.


So all of that was a lot less than I expected. I wish I could embed my map. That would make this post a lot cooler. But I can't, so we'll settle for just plain text ... again. I'm not exactly sure what direction to go in now, but I'm just going to keep plugging away at these prototypes until I hit a wall. If that happens, I'll just write a memo ... which sounds like it would be a hell of a lot easier. But now that I've started on the prototypes, I don't want to give up so easily. Persevere!

Prototyping is serious business.

Not that I would know. I haven't actually started besides that one I drew with a pink highlighter in class. However, I'm pretty sure it's serious business because I had originally intended to start as soon as class was over, and I have yet to begin. These past few weeks have been very busy. Besides the job search (which is going well ... I'm pretty certain I have a job offer), I've also been crazy because of the magazine I edit. I just proofed it today, and 1,200 copies should be printed by Friday. So, now that the job search and the magazine have wound down, it's time to focus on school. And unfortunately the prototypes do not have nearly as tight of a deadline as other things. Now that I've made excuses, here's the plan for the next few days.

First things first, I'm going to put all of the reports I've received into a spreadsheet. All of them. The other prototypes are going to be worthless without that one aspect. I'm hoping that the spreadsheet itself counts as one prototype.

The next prototype will be a crime map. Once I get a chance to really explore the options, I'm going to pick one service and use it to plot all of my points. Prototype three, done. (Well, not done, but you get the point.)

Next, I'm going to create multiple pages on my original spreadsheet. I'm not doing this originally because this is a step that will only happen if I have time. And let's be honest; it's the middle of November. We're pressed for time.

The next step is to create a database out of the spreadsheets. I realize this should ideally be done before making a map. However, I want to get the map done. That's going to be the most impressive thing that comes from this semester probably.

After the database is done, I'll probably create another map with another mapping service. Prototype number whatever, done.

And finally, I still want to draw out what I want the final product of the website to look like. I just need another big sticky note, and I'm having trouble getting one of those right now. If worse comes to worse, I'll draw it on a sheet of notebook paper with Sharpie pens. Yes, I said Sharpie pens. I bought some for my birthday, and they're amazing. But I rarely get to use them. And, I hope, that will be prototype number seven. Unfortunately I feel like I could have an entire semester and not get all of that done. Unless it were my job ... I could so do it then. It's just that with everything else going on, I feel like I'm pushing these prototypes to the back burner. Perhaps because I am ...

There's not much to say

I don't have much to say. Nothing has changed since my last blog post. However, there's something interesting about the digital formats of the files I received. They're viewable in Microsoft Snapshot Viewer, and here's what Wikipedia has to say about it. (Of course Wikipedia is the most reliable source I can think of.):

"The Microsoft Snapshot file format provides a way of storing a static snapshot of reports from Microsoft Access versions 97 through 2007. It enabled Windows users without Microsoft Access to view an electronic version of an Access report. The viewer, which is free but proprietary, is available from Microsoft."

Assuming Wikipedia is not lying (and I feel confident in making this assumption because when I downloaded Snapshot Viewer it said it was part of Access), there is a database somewhere that houses all of the crime reports. So, if that's the case, our work is basically done. We don't have to worry about transcribing and all of that fun stuff. We just have to take this database and put it online. So, the question now is ... WHERE IS THIS DATABASE? No one seems to be able to tell me. Maybe I'm not asking the right questions. Here's what Bob High, The News Reporter crime reporter told me when he sent the files.

 They came from the sheriff's office, not the police department. I guess I just assumed those were the same things because I've only talked to Edna at the police department. Is the sheriff's office something different? The files were forwarded from a lady named Barbara Milligan. I suppose I should try to figure out who she is too.


If we can somehow get access to this database, all we will have to do is create a crime map straight from the database. We'll also have to figure out some way to create a search engine from the file, but I assume that won't be too hard. Then, the ultimate goal, will be to figure out a way to automatically update the website when the database is updated. And that's another question ... How often is the database updated? I have reports from as recent as the day before I received them, so I have to assume it's updated daily.


That's all I have for crime reports for today. My other, more pressing, concern is about my grade in this class. We have one month left, and I have an F. I'm trying to graduate in a month, and without this class, I can't. I know I have to make more prototypes. But as for my other grades, I really don't know what to do. I'm concerned.

I have a vision

I finally know what I want the crime part of the website to look like. I need one of those big sticky notes right now. It actually looks similar to the one I already drew, but it's been refined. The map is an integral part. In fact, besides a small search bar on the side, it's the ONLY part. Simple. Clean. And yet behind the scenes, incredibly advanced.

This map has pinpoints, just like we created in class. Those pinpoints give simple information.  Type of crime. Address. Value of property. But CLICK on a pinpoint. Then you get the full description. Everything on the crime report that one might want to know is on the page that you just clicked to. All the details. In one place. And wait. It gets better.

The OCA is linked to all of the other OCAs that are the same. So all related reports are linked instantly. Similarly, you can view all reports of "larceny" or whatever else.

The best way to do the above, although it can certainly be done through linking, may be to search. The search bar is key. What if you don't know where the crime you're looking for happened? For browsing, the map is great, but for something specific, you want to search.

Don't worry. You can. Type whatever you want into the search bar. It will look through all the records to pull out anything that's related. Do you want to be even more specific? You can search by category. Yes, we have that option. From a drop-down menu, you can choose whether you want to search by date, incident, victim, property, offender, suspect or perhaps even something else.

I have no idea how to get from the point I'm at to this point. But I think it's a cool idea. I know there are a thousand stops along the way, and I should probably be focusing more on how to get this data transcribed than how to make the website look. I just wanted to throw it all out there before I forgot. It's been a long, tiring day. I don't want to blog anymore. But, I do have a Facebook addiction. So, you will be able to find me there if you want to throw around some thoughts.

The next steps

I keep starting to write this blog, and then I get distracted. So, this is getting done now. I don't have much to report. Bob High sent me a lot of reports ... like he totally blew up my inbox. I have arrest reports and incident reports, and they're in digital format. Things are looking good.

Now I have to figure out what to do next. First things first, I need to figure out how to combine arrest and incident reports into one spreadsheet. They have a lot of different categories; they aren't really similar at all. I know we basically did the same thing in class, but I struggled then too. I don't want 5,000 categories of information when most of it isn't even necessary. I just need to sit down with both reports and decide what can be combined and what's most important.

The next thing is that I need to figure out how to transcribe this data. The fact that it's in digital format is beautiful. I had to download Snapshot Viewer to be able to see the reports (I hate not having a Mac), but after that, I was able to see everything and it was typed. I assume that will make transcribing easier. I'm not sure exactly how much we're supposed to do. I guess that after I get the spreadsheet made, I will try transcribing a couple of them myself and see how long it takes. After that, I'll need the police blotter to see how many reports a person would have to do each day, and then I can calculate how much time it would take and how expensive it would be to hire a transcriber. Honestly, that's a little more math than I want to do. I'm glad I have calculator or I'd have already called it quits.

Really, that's all I have to report for the weekend. I feel like this blog was really short and uninformative, but I don't have anything else to say right now. I feel like patience is key with everything we're doing.

I hit the jackpot

Even I am surprised at how optimistic I've stayed through this entire process. (And for those of you who think I haven't been optimistic, well, you don't know me. I'm a glass half empty type of girl.) This evening, I finally found what I've been looking for. And most of it came not from Edna, who I am now on a first name basis with, but from Bob High, the crime reporter at The News Reporter.

Bob told me everything I wanted to know. There are, in fact, digital forms of the crime reports. And, as Edna does not seem to entirely understand what I want, Bob offered to e-mail them right to me. He is going to send an incident report and an arrest report in an electronic format. How exciting! First, however, he wants to get permission from the sheriff, and for whatever reason, that cannot be done until Thursday or Friday. So, he is confident that I will have these records, as am I, but I will not be obtaining them immediately. Patience is key.

I then made a quick call to Edna about the police blotter. She said the only way I could get that would be to come in and ask for it, and then she would need to know specifically what I want. Sometimes she's unclear, but I think I may be too. I think we just don't understand each other sometimes; it's hard for me to say whether she's giving me good information or things that really don't pertain to anything. Anyway, she said that they index their files both as paper copies and as digital copies. (And then I wanted to scream, "Well then why can't you send me a digital copy?!?!," but she's been so nice that I couldn't do it.) If I come in, I can look at the blotter and then decide what I want. Apparently I can't just say, "Give me everything."


So, that's all I have to report for now. This week is from hell, but it's been a day of success.

Finally ... the report is in

Friday, I succeeded in obtaining a hard copy of a crime report. It is a report from Oct. 26, which was supposedly the most recent report. Everything is hand-written. When I talked to Edna, she said something about them putting the reports into their filing system, which sounded like it may be on the computer. However, she was still adamant about not e-mailing anything. Perhaps when I go to Whiteville, I will get to the bottom of this mystery.

The report is two pages, as was the last one she sent me. I'm not going to sit here and type out each field that is filled in because that would be a waste of everyone's time. I will say, however, that each of these fields should be included in a database. There is a narrative part at the end, and I don't think it needs to be in the database simply because there just really isn't room. The narrative will be useful in obtaining details that may have been missed on the rest of the report, but the actual narrative will not go into the database.

In the case of this report, nothing about the offender is known except for race and sex. Those fields will still need to be included in any spreadsheet that is made, but for this report (and probably for several others), the information can just be filled in as "N/A" or "unknown" (or, as abbreviated on the report, "unk.")

I can't really say much else about the reports as of now. I really need to get several of them. I hope that happens this week. Also, I need to say that I'm quickly getting lost. I'm not exactly sure how to go about making these reports into an online database. I think I understand the basics of Caspio, but I don't necessarily understand where that fits into the picture. I need help connecting the dots. Am I the only one?

Remixing the news

PART ONE: CHAPTER 12

First things first, here are my thoughts on chapter 12:

I'm still stuck at this question ... HOW do we revolutionize the news in the ways that chapter 12 suggests?

What is the benefit to constructing a news story in a non-linear fashion rather than in a linear fashion? Obviously it serves readers better - they can view what they want rather than the entire story - but what benefit does it have for journalists? Our stories are just getting chopped into "chunks," and some of those "chunks" may never even be viewed.


What role does javascript play in Joomla and other such things? Does it just supplement like HTML? In applying for jobs, I've found that a lot of companies and organizations are using Joomla templates. Personally, I'm not a huge fan of Joomla. I like knowing HTML because when Joomla really pisses me off, I just go into the code and change whatever I want to change. Unfortunately, my knowledge of javascript is basic at best. In high school, I learned to do simple things like create scrolling text and a cursor tail. A cursor tail of hearts is fun for a teenage girl, but I've found that it doesn't serve me well in the professional world.

This is a random question that doesn't apply to anything except something that was said in the chapter. Why would I want to update my Twitter and Facebook with the same thing? Most of the people who follow me on Twitter are also my Facebook friends. I get frustrated when I see the same things on Twitter and Facebook. To me, it doesn't make sense to link the two. If you do that, why even have Twitter?

Random note: I appreciated the use of the word "gobbledy-gook." I feel that it's way underused, probably because most people aren't aware that it's a word.

PART TWO: MY NEWEST UPDATE

I'm still working on getting crime reports faxed to me. I will go to Whiteville, but it will not be this week. I tried an e-mail fax service, but each one I tried was not free. Receiving one fax doesn't seem like it's worth $69. I have reason to believe my apartment complex has a fax machine in its office. I haven't asked yet, but I may be able to use that one. The problem is going to be scheduling. I will need it to be faxed to me while I'm there obviously. But I don't get home before 4:30 any day except Friday. I'm sure it can be worked out, but it's something I'll need to think about.

That's all I have for now.

Getting crime reports

I have spent the past two days holed up in my room searching for jobs. The only time I allowed myself to leave was last night. I went to my high school's homecoming and then bowling, and I've never felt so lame in my life. In fact, I can't believe I just admitted it. Anyway, I need a break from the job search, so I'm going to give a quick update on how searching for records has been going.

Wednesday afternoon, I arrived in Yadkin County. I looked up the number to the fax machine in our office in the phone book, and then I called the Whiteville PD. I talked to Edna. (She's the lady at the front desk ... I got her name this time.) She was really helpful; she agreed to fax the most current report to me so that I could at least see what I'll be dealing with when I go pick them up next week. Everything went wonderfully ...

... Until I realized that I was back in Yadkin County, which means nothing works right. I got the fax not long after I got off the phone with Edna. And it looked terrible. For one, my family doesn't know how a fax machine works. We get a lot of fax spam, and my dad just puts them right back in the fax machine ... So my report is printed on top of a "Bahamas Cruise for $99!" ad. If that were the only problem, I would have just called Edna back and asked her to fax it again. But, the toner is also messed up in our fax machine. So even if there were no ad on top of the report, I probably wouldn't be able to read it. It's very frustrating. In this place, I don't have any other fax machine options.

I did try to get one report to look at. I failed. Well, I actually do have the report, and I'm bringing it to class. But, it's still a failure. Next week, however, I am definitely going to have good information. I'm sure of it. Edna is so helpful that there's no way this can go poorly. I hope.

Planning process

Things aren't really going that smoothly. I cannot travel to Whiteville over break. Well, I technically can. I won't lie. (After all, I just wrote a blog about how honest I am.) The thing is, from my house, which is where I'll be over fall break, Whiteville is 4.5 hours ... one way. And even where my grades are involved, I can't justify traveling 9 hours in one day. That's an entire day, and I had planned to spend my fall break job searching. I'm graduating in two months, so if I don't get on that job search thing too, I will soon be poor without the excuse of being a college student.

My plans are, currently, to convince the Whiteville Police Department to fax me just one record. There's a fax machine at my home home (my term for my actual home, not my home in Chapel Hill), so I just need to get the number off of that tomorrow, call and ask either front desk lady or the chief to fax those over. I think I can at least do that.

Then, once I'm back in Chapel Hill next week, Elizabeth and I are going to try to go to Whiteville either Thursday or Friday to obtain our records. They won't be quite as timely as had been hoped, but that's the best I can offer right now. I suspect that the trip won't take all that long, and I'll have the records by next Friday at the latest.

Complete success

That sums up my call to the Whiteville police department. My policy has always been honesty. I'm honest to a flaw - even my mom says I'm too blunt. But I appreciate honesty, and thus I always try to give it in return. Also, I can be really feisty when necessary, and I often am even when it's not necessary. However, my approach today was to be as nice as possible. When dealing with small-town people (and honestly people in general), that's the way to go. I grew up in a small town. I know how to deal with the mindless chatter that's necessary; I know how to pull out my accent (I know it sounds bad now, but you should hear me after I've been home for a week) and sound slightly less intelligent. And I know these things work because it makes me just another person, less intimidating and more friendly. All of that is rambling. The point is that I got all of my information within a six minute phone conversation. And I got it by being friendly and telling the lady everything she asked about and some things she didn't.

The people at the Whiteville police department know my name. They know I'm a student at UNC-Chapel Hill and that I will be visiting to collect records for a class project. They know we're working with "The News Reporter," and they know we're trying to get the information online. And I don't see any problems with them knowing that. I know people get defensive sometimes, but I think reporters are often offensive. We go in wanting everyone to throw their records at us. But we expect that they won't, so we go in prepared for a fight. We turn on the fire. We tell unnecessary lies. Any respect people had for us when we walked in soon disappears. And I'm just not O.K. with that. But I'm still rambling ...

The lady at the front desk (no, I didn't get her name) told me they do not have online versions of the records, and they do not have word documents. They cannot e-mail me anything, and they cannot fax me anything unless I'm looking for something specific. I'm going to try to get around that for my sample data - I don't want to drive all the way to Whiteville over fall break, especially because my house is in the exact opposite direction. I was told, however, that if I walk in and ask for reports, they can give me the reports from as recently as yesterday. The reports go back to the early 1980s, but those are only specific reports. (I didn't find out more information than that.) The front desk lady said that anyone at the front desk can get me these reports, but she suggested that I talk to the chief about what I'm doing if I plan on being in there more than once. So, I'm going to hold the chief accountable for getting me these reports - in fact, he will probably never hand me a record, but if something doesn't work out, he's getting blamed. His name and contact information can be found in my previous blog.

I did get put on hold once, and when the lady came back, she asked for my name. That's fine. She sounded like she was taking it so that when I came in they could be super-helpful for me, but maybe she was taking it to warn everyone. Maybe it was a bit of both. I don't actually care. What's the big deal about her having my name? I'm going to get the records either way.


As for the statements of economic interest in Raleigh, I haven't actually gotten around to those yet. I plan to start almost immediately, and I'm going to update this blog when I get that information. I'm not even 100 percent sure about what we're supposed to find, so hopeful my reporter's instinct will lead me. Or something.

I've returned from a search that took a lot longer than originally intended. After leaving last time, I detoured through the weekend and have just now resurfaced. So I have found ... nothing. Well, almost nothing. I found that the statements are filed with the Ethics Commission, and all of their contact information is here. However, I am not convinced that the records are not online. I'm just convinced that I don't know how to search for them. I e-mailed Professor Thornburg for help, and I'm waiting to hear back. If worse comes to worse, I'm pretty sure I can call the Ethics Commission and be pointed in the right direction. But since it's Sunday evening, that's not going to work for now. I'll update if/when I get updates.

And the frustration begins

I have been trying to figure out what I'm doing since 4:30 today. (In my defense, I stopped for a quick nap and to make a delicious Thai dinner for my roommates. I'm not actually so stupid that it has taken me 3 hours ... There was a break.) I'm totally lost when it comes to this records stuff. But just when I was ready to call it quits and write a blog saying I didn't know what I was doing (and yes, I already had the blogger screen pulled up ready to do exactly that), I found this cool little packet that we got in class last Thursday (or Tuesday). And in there, I found pretty much everything I had already found online. So it turns out that my ineptness only plays a small role in this never-ending search for nothingness. (It has been dubbed so because I'm ready to just throw my laptop out the window.) Anyway, here is what I've found:

First, please see the Whiteville police department website. Basically, it would be just as useful if it weren't even there. It was actually a little difficult to find, and it gave me almost no information. I know the chief's name now (Jerry Britt) and his e-mail address. I did find the telephone number (910-642-5111) and physical address, but it turns out the address was already in the packet of information that I so conveniently forgot about. This beautiful packet also shared with me that my search endeavors were pretty much in vain because there is no way to access the information online. But, if I'd like to get in my car and drive to Whiteville, I can get a printout version of yesterday's crimes.

In my search, I also stumbled across the N.C. Department of Justice website, which was also in our packet. (Had I not forgotten this packet, I would have saved a lot of time.) PDF reports are available there with state crime statistics (rates by city) from as recently as 2009. However, I'm just guessing that I'm still going to have to contact the Whiteville PD.


So, I do have some questions that I want my contacts to answer. (Unfortunately, it appears that I may not have any contacts ... This packet says contact with the police department in Whiteville was pretty unsuccessful.) Assuming I ever get to speak to these people, I suppose the most basic questions are as follows:


1. How are the records stored?
2. How are they indexed?
3. How current are the records?
4. How often are the records updated? 
(This packet says they're updated daily, but I didn't find any information to indicate whether that's correct so I just want to make sure.)
5. When was the last time they were updated?
6. When is the next time they'll be updated?
7. How far back do the records go?


I wasn't really able to find the answer to anything online; I just saw that the records have to be requested in person or by a letter. They can fax the records, but somehow in the plethora of room that I have in my college apartment, I haven't found space for a fax machine. Overall, I've been fairly frustrated with this whole experience, and I haven't even started looking for records yet. I can tell that the next few weeks are going to be bundles of fun.

Just some ramblings

I suppose it's about time for some random ramblings, and since we don't have a blog assignment for Monday, I might as well go ahead and ramble now. While rambling, I'd at least like to stay on the subject of the class, so I'm going to discuss some concerns I have.

I've never tried really hard to get records for anything. Either I get them, or I don't. Well, typically I get them. But if someone tells me no, it will be several weeks before the records become available, I move on. I don't like taking no for an answer, but when records are concerned, I just haven't found fighting to be worth it ... yet. 


I think I can honestly say that it's almost fall break and I still don't know exactly what's going on in this class. Part of that is senioritis. In two months, I'm gone ... But I'm not a total slacker. I understand that we're collecting all this information to put it online so that it will be easier to access. I'm just not sure I understand the purpose. Who is going to look at this information? Does anyone care? Am I going to be traveling to Raleigh and spending an absurd amount of time with spreadsheets for no real reason? And most importantly, how is this spreadsheet going to be connected to the newspaper?

Maybe I've been really zoned out recently. Maybe I should completely understand what's going on. Maybe I should be in Raleigh right now, searching for things that I'm not sure about. I'm interested in crime reports for no real reason. If possible, that's what I want to find.


I think things are about to get tedious, and that makes me nervous.

Public Record Resources

Just hearing "public records" makes me cringe. It takes me back to the days of media law, the days of learning about FOIA and "The Sunshine Act" and all those things that I just generally want to push out of my mind forever. I often get "public records" confused with "open/closed meetings;" while related, I remember more from the open/closed meetings portion of media law. I'm not sure what this blog is supposed to be about, but I assume we're supposed to read and talk about things we learned. I read all the links I could (only the first and third ones worked for me), and I didn't necessarily learn anything. Some things were refreshers; as previously stated, I put most of my media law knowledge in the far back of my mind and hope to dump it out at any moment. So, my blog is just about questions that these readings raised in my mind.

Here's the big question: How do you know who to contact to get a public record? Personally, I just imagine this building somewhere in downtown Raleigh (I'm totally unfamiliar with Raleigh, so for all I know I'm imagining Narnia) with a stuffy old lady sitting at the front desks and millions of dusty records that date back to the beginning of time on an infinite amount of shelves behind her. Now I know it doesn't work like that; I took reporting, and while I tried to stay away from public records, I did end up having to get a few records from the Board of Education. However, that was pretty simple because the board chair just e-mailed them to me. She was really friendly, and I didn't have to deal with a stuffy old lady behind a desk.


If someone tries to make you go through a public information officer, how do you avoid that? I've been in the situation before where someone just would not talk to me. Every time I attempted to contact him, he just simply said, "Talk to our PIO." And that was the end of our conversations. This isn't the best wording, but how can I force someone into doing what I want?

If someone just refuses to comply, what do I do? I read about the part about using G.S. 132, and while I'm sure that will impress people, I feel like under pressure I may forget it. And even if I don't, there's no guarantee that the argument will work.
What do we do when records are out-of-date? When I covered the Orange County school system in reporting, I wanted the minutes of the Board of Education meetings. But they didn't get those online until over a month after the meeting - at which point it would no longer be news. I was lucky enough to be in contact with a chair who tried to help me, but I know that won't always be the case.

I actually wanted some of the other links to work; these two started to raise some good questions, and I felt like I had more coming on before my search was put to a stop.  But honestly, I think most of my questions will come once I start searching. It's hard to understand the situation until you're actually in it, so it's hard for me to predict what will potentially be a problem. Right now all this stuff about spreadsheets is overwhelming me, so I can't imagine that the search for public records will be any worse.

Data-Driven Journalism

When I grow up (which is in less than three months now), I want to work for a humanitarian, non-profit organization. Basically I want to do what I did this summer. I want to talk to people who have been affected by natural disasters, economical disasters and disasters in general. I want to hear their stories, and I want to tell them. I want to bring about change in every small way I can. I want to travel the world, and I don't want to do anything that involves a newspaper. So that makes this assignment difficult for me. Generally, I couldn't find any fielded data for any humanitarian organizations; as they are not typical news organizations, this fact shouldn't be surprising. So I've changed it a bit ... I just picked my favorite source for news (CNN) and checked out their fielded data. I have no desire to work for them; my resume won't get sent there unless I haven't found anything in the non-profit world by December. But for this assignment, I wasn't sure what else to do ...

I chose the sports section of CNN; specifically I looked at the scoreboard for ACC football. It's pretty inclusive of everything one would want to know. I can find out who played who for every single week, I can find out the scores and I can find stats on the players and the teams. From a journalistic perspective, I honestly don't think they're missing anything. I used to work on the sports desk for a local paper, and while their standards weren't very high, I could definitely have written an informative article based on the information provided. I also would have called coaches and maybe players for quotes, but you can't include that in a database anyway. So I'll just move on to the next part ...

The data isn't presented in a spreadsheet, so you can't just look at the rows or columns and say, "Oh, here are the entities." I think it would be unreasonable to expect it to be in spreadsheet form; that's not aesthetically pleasing. However, it's still fairly easy to tell what the entities are; they are as follows: the teams playing, when they play(ed) and final score. For games that have yet to be played, they are scored/game and allowed/game.

The properties in this data base are as follows (I'm not listing all of them because this blog would be forever long and I would miss class):
Teams Playing: Wake, Miami, Florida State, Boston College, etc.
When they play(ed): August 23, 2010 - November 28, 2010
Final Score: 53-13, 45-0, 59-6, etc.
Ranking: 13, 20, 16, not ranked, etc.

Honestly this "fielded data" was hard to use to answer all of these questions, so it may not be as good as I had originally thought. If it had been set up in some sort of table, that might have been easier.

Collecting and using data

Things I didn't understand
 
XML
I understand the basic concept of XML, but what is it's advantage over HTML? Also, I wasn't aware that there are not predefined tags for XML. That just sound confusing. How does that work?


Page scraping
My question about this one is pretty simple - how does it work?

Relational databases
Same question as before - how does it work?

Normal forms
I just got confused in this section ... I'm not sure that I understand the point.

Things that were left out

The chapter says that databases were not good storytelling tools until they were on the Web. When did that happen? How can we continue to improve?

How do we, as journalists, cipher through all the data we collect to put it into an easy-to-read format for readers?

The chapter discusses how a misspelling often leads to a false negative in search results. It then lists ways to avoid that. Think about Google. When you misspell something, it shows results for what it thinks you may be trying to spell. Can't databases offer something similar to that?

Can other tools be as dynamic as maps? What would these tools look like, and what would their functions be?

A murder mystery about "The News Reporter"

Our blog assignment is to post our stories about our trips. I'd like to do that, but I haven't seen my story since I sent it off Friday night. I assume we are still working on it. The story is going to be long; it wouldn't properly fit into a blog post anyway. I took my creative writing minor and ran with it; I never get to use it in real-life situations. However, just for the sake of the assignment, I'm going to post what I wrote. It will be a teaser. If you want to find out how it ends, you'll have to find out from our other group members :). Let's embark on a murder mystery ...

The (Attempted) Murder of The News Reporter

He’s in critical condition, but they think he’s going to make it. That’s all we know right now. The News Reporter was a nice enough paper. There’s no obvious reason that anyone would have tried to murder him. The people of Whiteville, N.C. are worried. Of course they hope he makes a full recovery (almost everyone in town enjoys his news), but without knowing the motive, they can’t know who might be next.

We would like to tell these people not to worry. However, we can’t give that assurance. We’re Dr. Thornburg’s Fantastic Four – Amanda, Chelsea, Elizabeth and Lauren – here to save the town. Mr. High, the owner of The News Reporter, has hired us to find the culprit. But we’re totally unfamiliar with this foreign place, and scoping out suspects, clues and motives is a daunting task. Luckily, the people of Whiteville are talkative and friendly. As each hour goes by, they’re feeding us more and more useful information. That’s how we’ve come up with a fully comprehensive list of suspects. It’s also how, one by one, we’re marking them off.

So far, we don’t know who the attempted murderer is. We only know who it is not. Right now, I can certainly tell you that it’s not …

Renee Foster, continental breakfast extraordinaire

We met Renee at Best Western. We walked in, still almost asleep, at 8:30 a.m. “You girls are lucky,” she said. “I was just getting ready to put everything up and walk out.”

We dragged our feet across the floor to the small selection of food. Whereas some people might think of eggs, bacon, gravy and biscuits when they come across a “continental breakfast,” Renee only offered us a few different kinds of cereal, cans of fruit that were suspiciously wet and a couple of plain bagels. We sat down with our coffee, and before we could even begin to plan our course of action, Renee sat down with us. She didn’t ask where we were from or what we were doing.

“I’m so tired,” she said. “I was just getting ready to walk home. I’m taking classes over at the middle school for my GED right now. I’m taking language arts and math. I always hated math, but it’s easy. Well, it’s not easy, but once you get into it, it’s fun. Let me tell you, I love doing fractions!” Renee didn’t even seem to pause for a breath. She was a lot to handle at 8:30. She continued to talk for a while, and soon we had heard stories about everything from her grandbaby to her high school days.

“I’m leaving when I get my GED. I’ve worked at Best Western for two years, but I’m going to go somewhere else when I’m done.”

There was no way to smoothly turn this conversation in the direction we wanted it to go, so Elizabeth just finally stepped up. “How do you feel about The News Reporter?”

“Oh, what happened is a terrible thing. But honestly, I don’t have time to read it. I’m either at work or at class, and when I’m not, I just want to relax. I think it’s a great paper.”

Her story didn’t seem convincing. Although there was no obvious motive for why she would have tried to kill the paper, she didn’t have a strong emotional attachment to it. “Where were you on the night of the attempted murder of the paper?”

“Last Monday? I had class. You can check at the middle school if you want.” She paused. “Hey, would y’all mind giving me a ride? I live right behind the newspaper office.”

We agreed to give Renee a ride, and then we made a quick call to the middle school. Her alibi checked out. Suspect one was out.

We were back to having no leads, but that wouldn’t be our status for long. As we walked into the newspaper office, we met Mark, the man who designs the online portion of The News Reporter. “Hi, are y’all from Chapel Hill?” he asked. Apparently word about the Fantastic Four had spread quickly. “Let me take you to Mr. High’s office.”

As we walked into the tiny newsroom and down the hall, Mark briefly filled us in on his work. “We think that this online site is going to be the only way to save The News Reporter’s life,” he said. “It’s going to be a serious overhaul. Lots of plastic surgery will be involved, but at this point, there’s nothing else we can do. The paper will still exist in the print edition – we sell hundreds of copies that way – but we want this website to completely redesign the paper. It will be like a whole new life for it.”

“And I suppose you want us to help with that,” Chelsea muttered.

“Of course we do. But first on the agenda, we have to find the killer. Here is Mr. High’s office. He’ll be in within the next few minutes.”

We looked around the office. There was a copy of the paper on the floor, so we picked it up. Within the advertising section, we saw J. Ray Realty. We weren’t exactly sure why a real estate agent would kill the paper, but she immediately seemed suspicious. We had no other leads, so we formulated a plan to descend on her office immediately. As we ran out of the office, we ran into Mr. High.

“Hello, ladies. Where are you hurrying off to?”

“Sorry to just run off, but we think we may have a lead,” Amanda said. “We need to get to her immediately.”

“Who is it?”

“J. Ray of J. Ray Realty.”

“Oh, she worked for our paper for several years. She sold ads. I would be surprised if she had anything to do with it.”

“Mr. High, you might be surprised about a lot of things. We don’t know what a former employee’s motivation might be, but we need to see her right away.”

“Very well. You ladies are doing good work. Keep it up.” We continued to run out the door and to the car, but when we cranked it, it was dead.

“We don’t have time for this!” Chelsea said. She busted back into the office, and ran straight to the receptionist’s desk. “Does anyone have jumper cables?”

Everyone seemed to have jumper cables. Within minutes, half of the staff was outside. They did quick introductions, jumped the car and then the Fantastic Four climbed back in.

“Thanks!” Amanda said. “Oh, and we have one more thing. Where is J. Ray Realty?”

“Just go right up to Madison Street, take a left and go around the traffic circle at the courthouse,” the receptionist said. “Her building has a red awning over it.”

The Fantastic Four sped off to see their next suspect …

J. Ray, sassy real estate agent

J. Ray was less than 5 feet tall, but what she didn’t have in height, she made up for in attitude. She was friendly, but she didn’t mind telling us her opinion of everything we asked about and a lot of what we didn’t ask about. We sat down in the kitchen of her office, and she started talking before we even had our notebooks and pens ready.

“I’ve been on both sides of the advertising thing. I sold ads, and now I take out an ad. But I do it more out of obligation than anything else. The sellers want to see their ads in the paper, so I buy a bulk rate. I also do it out of a sense of community; it’s based on the relationship that I have with the people at the newspaper. I used to advertise every week, but it just didn’t seem like it was worth it. I’d really like to advertise with the paper online. I’ve heard that the website will save the paper’s life. If that’s the case, I’m excited. When people can click on my ad and go straight to our website, I feel like we’ll be getting a lot more business.”

“What does your company already do online?” Amanda asked.

“We use Facebook. Honestly, in a small place like Whiteville, people just want to use Facebook to get all up in everyone’s business. I don’t want any part in it. But if you want a successful business, you have to do it. That’s what people want.”

“What do you think about The News Reporter?” Chelsea asked.

“I don’t have time for the news. When I want news, I watch ‘Good Morning America.’ I scan the paper for obituaries, and I like to look at the ‘DIDYOB?’ section. I also try to look at the front pages and the pictures, but other than that, I don’t pay a lot of attention to it.”

“And besides ads, what do you think about having to reconstruct the paper so that it goes online?” Elizabeth asked.

“It doesn’t really matter to me. I don’t use the Internet at home. I have a Droid, but I’ve never even been on the Internet with it. People do seem to comment on our online presence, so I think it will be good for us.”

We were all thinking the same thing. J. Ray seemed to love the idea of having the paper online for her business. If she knew that an online reconstruction could save the paper, her business was the perfect motive for attempting to kill it. “Where were you on the night of the attempted murder of the paper?” Chelsea asked.

“Am I a suspect? That’s just silly. I was selling a house on Hickory Road to four girls who recently graduated from college. Here’s their number. Ask them.”

Chelsea called the number, and all four girls backed up J. Ray’s story. Once again, it seemed like we had hit a wall. Suspect number two was not the culprit. Defeated, we walked out the door and started to stroll down Madison Street.

However, our list of suspects wasn’t over yet. As we walked down the street, we saw a florist shop. We were initially attracted to it because of the mounds of Carolina décor in the window, so we walked in. It was there that we met suspect number three …

I'm impressed if you stuck with me thus far. That's where my part of the story ended, and Amanda picked it up. I'm as anxious as you are to read the rest ...

Whiteville plans

Our blog assignment is to write about what we're doing in Whiteville Thursday. This assignment should be pretty easy because I'm the "problem solver" (which honestly makes me think of a title of someone in the Mafia who "gets rid of" problematic people). So that means I have no idea what I'm doing until tomorrow. Thus ends my blog.

---

OK, it was a fake ending. I'm sure I have something to say about Whiteville, although I'll admit it's not much. It's true that I have no idea what sort of problems I'll be solving. But I do know that I want to find these "edge users" we spoke of in class. When I think of edge users, I initially think of high school students, although I'm unsure why. It definitely creates a problem because you can't just walk into a high school and start interviewing and stalking people. Of course we listed tons of other edge users, and I intend to find at least one of them. I have no idea what I'll ask that person, but I'm sort of hoping it just pops into my head when I get there.


Honestly, I want to explore the town a little before I get into the assignment. Elizabeth and I are going down tomorrow night, so we'll be around for a while before we have to start solving problems. Once I feel out the town a bit, I'm hoping I'll understand our assignment better and have more to blog about. Until then, it's time to prepare for this trip (by diving into the thousand things I have to do before I leave).

Websites and such

I need to rant for just a moment. The thing is, it really angers me that AP changed the correct style from "Web site" to "website." It's hard to remember. It was really a pointless change. And most importantly, I felt good about myself when I wrote "Web site." I felt superior, like I knew something that so many other people did not. But then suddenly I was out of the loop. I remember the day I found out. It was my first week of work this summer, and some guy came by my cubicle for a morning chat. (I have found that in the workplace, people do a lot more chatting than working.) He saw my AP Stylebook on my desk, and we started to discuss. As typical office chatter generally goes, he tried to be witty. "Yeah, I can't believe they recently changed the style for 'website.' What are they going to do next? Take the hyphen out of 'e-mail'?" I was appalled that I didn't know, so I just laughed (a fake laugh, obviously, as the comment was about as nerdy [and yet cute and journalisty, which I appreciated] as they come) and nodded my head. "I know, right?" Then I searched online diligently for whether this change had actually taken place, and I couldn't find news of it anywhere. Honestly, something like that should be publicized a little more.

But anyway, I have websites (it irks me so much) to discuss.

First there's Mooco. I'm much better at giving criticism rather than praise, so that's the route I'm going to go. First, you have to know what you're looking for. You need SOMETHING to type into the search bar; there's no browse option. I only know one person from the Southern Pines area, so I typed in his name. (I felt like a creeper.) No results were found; perhaps it's because he recently moved. After that, I just typed "J. Smith" so I could get some results. (I also tried "Wal-Mart.") I like the way the information is compiled, but honestly, I'm not sure that I saw much use for it. Basically it was the white pages, just on a more specific website. And the button labeled "website" is really just a Google search. Why wouldn't I just use white pages and Google? The website is a nice thought, but honestly, it doesn't seem to offer me anything new or exciting.

As for Bakotopia, there's a lot of stuff on the homepage. I call it stuff because it overwhelmed me and I just really didn't want to look through all of it. One thing I did like on the homepage was the calendar. Other than that, the website pretty much failed. My biggest problem was that there was no news search option (or at least I couldn't find one). If I'm looking for a specific article, I don't want to look through pages and pages of articles I don't care about. My other big concern was that the classified links didn't exactly work. They would take you to a page, but the page always said "no posts in this category." That was frustrating. A tiny contention I have, and this problem is barely worth mentioning, had to do with the ads. I realize that Bakersfield is in California and marijuana is legal there for medical purposes. I'm OK with that, and if we're asking my personal opinion, I don't see why it shouldn't be legal everywhere. That's totally beside the point. The point is that some people don't share my opinion, and when they see an ad for "420 Evaluations" that promises weed to anyone with pot leaves all over the background of it, they may be taken aback. I realize that websites need ad revenue, but if the ads you choose to run make your customers run away, is it worth it? Of course I have no research on this subject at all, and for all I know, all users of Bakotopia may love weed. The name of the site certainly makes me question.

I'm a little biased toward Ushahidi because I spent some time in Kenya this summer. I appreciated that they had an extensive "about us" section so that I knew exactly what the website was about (although honestly the video almost put me to sleep). The downside is that the application (or whatever exactly it is) has to be downloaded. That seemed like too much, so I didn't bother with it. Doesn't it seem likely that other people would feel that way too?

Bluffton, although slightly overwhelming like Bakotopia, actually had really good organization. There's a place to search, and everything is divided into sections. I like that. Guardian seemed similar, with everything you could want in one spot. 


Gas buddy, which I assume everyone enjoys, is really convenient. I think it's a great example of useful information put into an easy-to-use database. The unfortunate part is that it doesn't have gas prices for everywhere (such as my hometown), but overall, I think it does a pretty good job.


After all this rambling, you might ask what my conclusion is. And I would tell you ...

Making a useful, easy-to-use and simple database is hard.