Journalism Tools

Investigative Reporting; Journalism; General Research

• Investigative Reporters and Editors (IRE)

Useful IRE Resources:

- NICAR Net Tour - The National Institute for Computer-Assisted Reporting (NICAR) is an IRE program.

- Analysis jobs by NICAR - Names the media organizations NICAR has worked for, and lists kinds of analysis jobs NICAR has done.

Journalism Tools

• The Journalist's Toolbox (Society of Professional Journalists)

The (Journalist's Toolbox) offers sources for useful information on a wide range of topics of interest, especially to investigative reporters. Topics include protecting sources, privacy, data visualization, digital verification, transcription tools, rights-free photos, mobile journalism, public records, copy-editing, and more.

Audio / Video File Conversion

Convert restricted sound file formats to something more useful, open and free.

• HOW TO CONVERT WMA FILES TO MP3

Does your voice recorder save its sound files in Microsoft's patent-restricted WMA file format? Maybe the article linked-to above will help.

Audio Enhancers

• Audioalter - Your online audio toolkit: A collection of easy-to-use web tools for all your audio files.

Audioalter is a collection of web tools that you can use to add effects to your audio files. It allows you change speed, volume, pitch, duration and much more.

Includes:

- 3D Audio: Make your song sound more 3D by adding a panning effect to it

- 8D Audio: Use the 8D Audio effect to get the full audio experience

- Bass Booster: Boost the bass of a song making it more bass heavy

- Converter: Convert any audio file to another file format

- Equalizer: Adjust the frequencies of your audio

- Pitch Shifter: Change the pitch of your audio

- Reverse Audio: Reverse an audio file and make it play backwards

- Speed Up / Slow Down: Change the tempo without changing the pitch

- Stereo Panner: Pan the audio to left or right

- Trimmer / Cutter: Cut out a part of your audio file

- Vocal Remover: Remove the vocals from a song leaving only the instrumental

- Volume Changer: Make your audio louder or quieter

Online File Converters

• 123apps: Includes:

- PDF Tools: Essential Online PDF Tools

- Audio Cutter: The easiest way to cut out a piece of music

- Audio Joiner: Merge multiple audio files into a single track

- Audio Converter Convert audio files online from one format into another

- Video Converter: Convert video files online from one format into another

- Video Cutter: The easiest way to cut out a section of a video

- Video Recorder: Record video online with your webcam

- Voice Recorder: Record a voice using a microphone

- Archive Extractor: Extract any compressed file online

• FileConverto

Convert Multimedia Files: Convert, compress and edit multimedia files (MP4, MOV, MP3, WAV, PDF, PNG, JPEG) online for free with our easy-to-use video, audio and PDF converters.

• Online Audio Converter (MP3, WAV, Ogg, WMA, M4A, AAC) – media.io

Convert Sound Files Online

Editor's Note: Tuesday, December 29, 2015: Was able to successfully convert WMA file to MP3 using this online service.

Data Journalism & Data Journalism Tools

• LEARNO: Online courses for media professionals - European Journalism Centre (EJC)

Learn from the best, from anywhere, at any moment, at your own pace.

• How to Teach Data Journalism for Beginners

This guide is aimed at the journo-academic who might be teaching a basic data course for the first time and wants to know where and how to get started.

• Data Driven Journalism: Resources

A variety of mapping, analysis, scraping, visualization and other tools and tutorials.

• Data Journalism - MaryJo Webster's Training Materials

A collection of MaryJo Webster's data journalism training materials, primarily used for a college-level course she teaches at the University of Minnesota.

• Claire Miller's Huge List of Data Journalism Resources

List of links to tutorials on Yahoo Pipes, Excel, SQL, Google Refine, Geocoding and more.

Data Visualization

• Chart and image gallery: 30+ free tools for data visualization and analysis

Lists tools for analysis and charting, creating searchable tables, data acquisition, data cleaning, data reformatting, GIS mapping, statistical analysis, visualization and more.

Excel

• How journalists can use Excel to organize data for stories

Increasingly, reporters are turning to Microsoft Excel -- or similar spreadsheet programs like Apple's Numbers -- to advance their reporting. They're using spreadsheets to keep track of city budgets, baseball statistics, campaign finance and hospital data.

• Using Excel to do data journalism

Microsoft Excel is a powerful tool that will handle most tasks that are useful for a journalist who needs to analyze data to discover interesting patterns.

• Using Excel to do precision journalism, an Update from the School of Data Journalism in Perugia.

Based on Steve Doig's workshop “Excel for Journalists”.

Spreadsheets (General)

• SPREADSHEETJOURNALISM

Monthly blog on using spreadsheets in journalism.

• Tutorial: Spreadsheets (UC Berkeley Advanced Media Institute)

This tutorial describes how to create and do calculations on a Google Docs spreadsheet, with some notations about differences in Microsoft Excel.

Dictation & Transcription

• Dictation - Online Speech Recognition

Chrome App For Online Dictation

Editor's Note: Monday, December 28, 2015: I tested this app out on my home workstation with my USB headset with microphone. Works well.

• oTranscribe BETA

Upload Sound File, Play It Back At Any Of Multiple Speeds, Transcribe It

A free web app to take the pain out of transcribing recorded interviews.

• Speechlogger | Automatic Speech Recognition & Translation Online

FREE. Accurate. Fun. No installation, no registration. Simply click the mic and start dictating text. Features auto save, auto punctuation, instant translation & more.

• Speechnotes | Speech to Text Online Notepad

Speech to Text Online Notepad. Free. The Professional Speech Recognition Text Editor. Distraction-free, Fast, Easy to Use & Free Web App for Dictation & Typing

Editor's Note: 17:45, 17 January 2016 (PST) I think I like Speechnotes even better than Speechpad.

• SpeechPad - a new voice notebook

Speechpad is a voice recognition application for converting speech to text (a good external microphone is strongly recommended). It can also convert an audio file to text. The current version of Speechpad works only for the Chrome browser.

Editor's Note: 15:05, 15 January 2016 (PST) Initial test indicates this works pretty well.

• Transcribe

Chrome App For Uploading Sound Files & Transcribing Them To Text

Editor's Note: Monday, December 28, 2015: I found this while searching for sound file to text transcription services. When I was about to use it, I discovered it's not free (but still worth looking into).

• VoiceBase

Another Transcribe-By-Machine Option. Transcribe-By-Human Options, Too

VoiceBase Turns Your Voice Recordings and Transcriptions into a Searchable Database

Transcription Hacks & Tutorials

• Dirty, Fast, and Free Audio Transcription with YouTube

Transcribe Audio Using YouTube (Hack)

See Also

Data Journalism

• Data Journalism Handbook

The Data Journalism Handbook can be freely copied, redistributed and reused under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license.

• Data Driven Journalism

Data driven journalism was created by the European Journalism Centre (EJC) with partial funding from the Dutch Ministry of Education, Culture and Science.

• The Poynter Institute's Data Journalism

References

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