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Track News Stories on a Particular Transnational Crime
| Due Date: Bi-Weekly
on Friday and Tuesday nights in weeks
1 through 3 |
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Purpose:
To critically evaluate the information provided in
transnational crime news stories. Much of what we know about transnational crime
comes from journalism.
Directions:
Student
will choose a particular crime of interest and track news stories appearing in
on-line newspapers about that crime. The student will locate
2 stories per week,
and write an online journal report about one of them,
submitted by Friday and Tuesday nights respectively. Student will critically
assess the information in the news report, using the criteria learned in the
course.
In Week 1, pick a specific crime type and
set up ways to track related news stories. Post your first
report by Friday night. Post
to discussion forum as an attachment the story you
have read, and the detailed review. Be sure to list the newspaper,
date of stories, and URL of each.
How Do I Track
Transnational Crime News Stories?
In order to track current news stories one
needs to build an online, updateable newspaper/magazine page or set up a news
bot service. Crayon assists you in
building a customized newspaper choosing from the specific sections of thousands
of online newspapers and other media sources. As these newspaper sections are
updated daily, your personal Crayon newspaper continues to provide up to date
news.
News
bots can help you be selective by searching the websites of newspapers,
magazines, and e-zines to find new articles that are of specific interest to
you. You can request that all stories on certain crimes such as
drug trafficking, arms trafficking, computer crimes, terrorism, child
pornography, etc., be tracked by using any of these as keywords.
A site that
specifically sends out information on international criminal justice news
stories is WJIN: The World Justice
Information Network. You will need to enroll with WJIN first, then sign up
for the news clipping service. UNFORTUNATELY THIS SERVICE IS
NOW DEFUNCT.
Other suggestions for services that will send stories to you via email include InfoBeat
and
the New York Times
(use their news tracker service
to create personal daily news clippings).
Google now has a
news search feature as well.
Note: It took me
a while but I was able to set a feed up by pasting the newsfeed
RSS URL into Thunderbird NewsReader.
Here's what I did to set up a "terrorism" newsfeed.
1. Searched Google News using "terrorism" as my
keyword.
2. Clicked the RSS button.
3. Copied the resulting URL
http://news.google.com/news?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&rls=GGLG,GGLG:2005-44,GGLG:en&q=terrorism&output=rss
into my Mozilla Thunderbird NewsReader (free at
http://www.mozilla.com/thunderbird/ ) under News and Blogs: Manage
Subscriptions: Add.
The resulting newsfeed showed up then as: Google
Search Terrorism.
From then on all I have to do is open Thunderbird and
click on the subscription Google Search: Terrorism. It will bring back all the
articles since the last time I visited Google News using this method.
News Junkies Can Custom-Design Online Channels
By Leslie Walker
Sunday, March 13, 2005; Page F07
One of the Internet's busiest paperboys got a bit more personal last
week: Google News, which culls headlines from 4,500 news sources across
the Web, added a custom feature letting people design their own news
channels.
Users can zap Google's standard sports section off the page, or move
those headlines higher. They can add a personal section called, say,
"Wacko Jacko," to display the latest trial headlines about the PJ-clad
defendant, or "Condoleezza" to fetch news of the jet-setting secretary of
state.
To create a custom channel, enter keywords describing any topic into
a special search box, as if doing a regular Web search. Google News saves
each query as a menu button, which you can click later to see more news
about that subject. On the main summary page, you can mix and match your
own topics with Google's standard categories.
Big deal, you say; Yahoo News has long done something similar in its
"My Yahoo" area, which also features weather, stocks and other content
besides news. In fact, all the big Internet services -- Yahoo, America
Online, Microsoft's MSN -- let people save personalized home pages.
Google's new service, though, is more tightly focused on news and
pulls up articles from a wider variety of sources than its rivals. News
junkies may love this hyperactive paperboy because it lets them save a lot
of custom topics -- up to 20 at once -- and access them using brightly
colored menu buttons.
Our tests showed it was a snap to create and modify any custom
channel, but not so easy to create the short labels required to avoid
messing up the news page layout. That requires clicking the "advanced"
button beside each keyword box and filling in a separate label form.
Since Google lacks unified registration across all of its services
-- though it is moving in that direction -- for now it saves individual
custom news pages with cookies, small files stored on user's computers. To
let people access the same custom page on multiple computers, Google lets
them save a string of code and e-mail it to themselves or friends.
Unlike Yahoo, Google News does not permit custom news sections using
a content distribution system known as RSS. But Marissa Mayer, Google's
consumer product manager, said that could change if enough consumers ask
for RSS, which makes it easier to pull articles from blogs and many
traditional news outlets.
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You may
locate other ways to track such stories. Please share these with the class via
email.
CRAYON Daily News
http://crayon.net/
News Bots are reviewed
here.
http://www.botspot.com/dailybot/newsbot.html
If you locate other good
news clipping services, please let the class know about them.
If you are on the FSU
dial-up system or connected via proxy server access, you can use the
Lexis-Nexis news service, too.
It's directly linked from the
FSU Library databases
page.
I also set up a
page of archived news stories.
TV news programs can now
be searched as well:
Google and Yahoo Are Extending Search Ability to TV Programs
By SAUL HANSELL
Jan. 24, 2005
 oogle
and
Yahoo are introducing services that will let users search through
television programs based on words spoken on the air. The services will look
for keywords in the closed captioning information that is encoded in many
programs, mainly as an aid to deaf viewers.
Google's service, scheduled to be introduced today, does not actually
permit people to watch the video on their computers. Instead, it presents
them with short excerpts of program transcripts with text matching their
search queries and a single image from the program. Google records TV
programs for use in the service.
Google's vice president for product management, Jonathan Rosenberg, said
offering still images was somewhat limited but was a first step toward a
broader service.
"The long-term business model is complicated and will evolve over time,"
Mr. Rosenberg said. Eventually, Google may offer video programming on its
site or direct people to video on other Web sites. But for now, the issues
relating to the rights and business interests of program owners are very
complex, he said.
A Google spokesman, Nate Tyler, said the service would include "most of
the major networks," including ABC, PBS, Fox News and C-Span. Mr. Rosenberg
said Google did not think it needed the permission of network and program
owners to include them in the index but would remove any program or network
if the owner requests it. He declined to discuss any business arrangements
between the program owners and Google.
Brian Lamb, the chief executive of C-Span, said he met with
representatives of Google and approved of their service but no money changed
hands between the two organizations.
Yahoo introduced a test version of a different sort of video search last
year, available from a section of its site, that lets users comb through
video clips from various Web sites.
Today, Yahoo will move the video search to its home page. In the next few
weeks, it will introduce the ability to search the closed-captioning text
for programs from some networks, including Bloomberg and the BBC. Unlike the
Google service, Yahoo's offering will let users watch 60-second video clips.
David Ives, the chief executive of TV Eyes, which is providing that part
of Yahoo's service, said some broadcasters were paying to have their
programs included in the search. In other cases, he said, the broadcaster
and TV Eyes will split revenue from advertisements placed next to the video
clips.
NY TIMES |
What Type of
Analysis Should I Do of the Stories?
Step
1: The goal is to
critically analyze what you are reading. Ask yourself a series of questions
about each story, such as:
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What types of sources
are relied upon by the journalist?
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Are there experts
representing more than one point of view interviewed and quoted for this
story?
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What sources of
information appear to be missing?
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How does this story
compare to what you are finding out about this type of crime from your
reading of other sources (particularly course materials
such as textbooks, journals, criminal justice agency
reports, etc.)?
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Does the journalist
appear to be biased?
If you can answer questions such as these
about the story, you are ready to write your analysis.
Include all 5 of the bullet points above in your discussion board post. As the course progresses
and your knowledge of alternative sources increases, the critiques should
improve. Step 2:
In order to further improve
your skills, read the reviews posted by your fellow students.
Pick any two of your fellow classmates and via the discussion board ask them
additional questions about the original news story for clarification.
Once a student has two questions, please select a different student.
Step 3: Please respond to the
questions raised by your fellow students. You may use other course reading
sources in your response.
Attach your reply to the same discussion board post. Main
posts are due by Fridays (A) and Tuesdays (B), response questions by Sunday (A) and Thursday nights
(B)
and final replies within a week.
The instructor will also point out effective reviews to serve as models.
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