{"id":51,"date":"2015-12-25T17:19:50","date_gmt":"2015-12-25T17:19:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/revolutionsincommunication.com\/journalism\/?page_id=51"},"modified":"2022-09-26T20:20:29","modified_gmt":"2022-09-26T20:20:29","slug":"story-starters","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/revolutionsincommunication.com\/journalism\/the-craft\/story-starters\/","title":{"rendered":"Reporting Resources"},"content":{"rendered":"

Most active reporting efforts start with a question<\/strong> that leads to research.\u00a0 By getting to know some of the government spending, safety and census information about the region you serve as a journalist, you can raise questions that lead you to significant issues.<\/p>\n

For example — Suppose you wonder whether your city or county is spending too much or too little on fire and rescue services. You can check spending in your county against per capita<\/em> spending\u00a0in other counties and the state average by downloading the most recent comparative data from the Virginia Auditor of Public Accounts. Of course, there may be a good reason why spending is higher in one place than the next, so this is just a good starting point as you ask questions of local government officials.<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Virginia Auditor of Public Accounts<\/a> \u2014 Especially valuable are the comparative local government\u00a0 reports<\/a>\u00a0 in Excel format which allow per-capita comparisons in all kinds of spending categories.<\/li>\n
  2. \u00a0Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission <\/a>(JLARC)\u00a0 \u2014 Check reports on local agencies.\u00a0 JLARC audits state government units and reports to the state legislature.\u00a0 (Unlike the APA, which reports to the governor). This is similar to federal-level legislative agencies like the Congressional Budget Office reports or Government Accountability Office, both of which report to Congress.<\/li>\n
  3. New River Valley Planning Commission<\/a> has population and income reports for the area.\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n
  4. Campus crime reports.\u00a0 One list of links is here<\/a>.<\/li>\n
  5. Virginia Town Hall<\/a> — Public comments on proposed regulations.<\/li>\n
  6. \u00a0Virginia Courts<\/a> and the general Case information<\/a> site. This database is astonishingly difficult and cumbersome to use,<\/em> and not at all timely or generally useful,\u00a0 but at least you can at least get a small window into the court system.\u00a0 It does not substitute for on-site reporting, but it can be helpful, for instance, in checking on the outcome of criminal cases and civil lawsuits against local government or universities.<\/li>\n
  7. Open Secrets<\/a> \u2014 Top campaign contributions for Congress.<\/li>\n
  8. EPA enforcement<\/a> and compliance history online<\/li>\n
  9. National environmental public health tracking system <\/a>\u2014 Centers for Disease Control.<\/li>\n
  10. US Census \/ also: for Radford VA\u00a0<\/a><\/li>\n
  11. Virginia Public Access Project<\/a> \u2014 Track lobbyist expenses and state office campaign contributions.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Most active reporting efforts start with a question that leads to research.\u00a0 By getting to know some of the government spending, safety and census information about the region you serve as a journalist, you can raise questions that lead you … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":53,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"full-width-page.php","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-51","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/revolutionsincommunication.com\/journalism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/51","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/revolutionsincommunication.com\/journalism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/revolutionsincommunication.com\/journalism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revolutionsincommunication.com\/journalism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revolutionsincommunication.com\/journalism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=51"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/revolutionsincommunication.com\/journalism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/51\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1897,"href":"https:\/\/revolutionsincommunication.com\/journalism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/51\/revisions\/1897"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revolutionsincommunication.com\/journalism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/53"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/revolutionsincommunication.com\/journalism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=51"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}