REPORTERS' DISASTER PLANS

Chip Scanlan writes in a recent Poynter column:

When Hurricane Charley drove my family and me from our home last Thursday, each of us carried away our most precious belongings. The kids brought favorite books, stuffed animals, and keepsake boxes filled with irreplaceable memories. My wife packed family photos, passports, birth certificates, and other documents, along with a jewelry box stuffed with trinkets from her childhood in Germany. I brought along 40 years of my writing life, crammed into three plastic crates, two DVDs, and a ZIP disk.

It's a good piece: a look at what Scanlan went through, and the decisions he had to make about what he would take when he was forced out his home. It may be a little early in your career to start worrying about your own "emergency kit," but it's worth thinking about.

11:15:56 PM    

JOURNALISM & TRAUMA

I've pointed to this before, but it's worth reviving, particularly as the Dart Center for Journalism & Trauma has added new information.

The Tips & Tools section has links to a series of article to help journalists cover stories involving violence and trauma, as well as tips for coping with the effect that covering such stories has on reporters.

Among the tips are individual articles on interviewing victims and families; covering disasters; domestic violence; and sexual violence. This stuff is good: not only does it offer tips, it helps put the reasons why we cover violent and traumatic events in context. You might want to add it to your bookmark file of tools.

Jonathan Dube at Poynter, my source for this reminder, also reports:

DART has also revamped and expanded its research section, which includes a number of useful articles on how war reporting and other traumatic events affect journalists.

10:56:15 PM    

A PHOTOGRAPHER BLOGS

Here's a new addition to my daily blog reads (and you might want to make it one of yours): Canadian photojournalist Philippe Roy's photojournaliste.ca.

Roy not only has daily posts that are worth reading, he has articles and travel writing, a photo log (flog), and samples of his photography, accessed from a spiffy index bar.

Great work, nice site.

10:44:29 PM    

POLL HELPER

I have been a victim of CW (conventional wisdom) when it comes to polling and margins of error, but thanks to Kevin Drum, the scales have fallen from my eyes.

Last week, I came across a mathematician's explanation of what the margin of error really means. But it was math -- really heavy math -- and like a good journalist I gave up trying to understand it.

Now, Kevin Drum, who blogs for Washington Monthly, has come up with a handy dandy chart that helps us poor deprived mathaphobes out.

(You can skip the following paragraph if math really frightens you and check out the chart, which makes everything clear.)

The chart looks at where a poll's margin of error and the reported lead for a candidate intersect to give you the probability of the accuracy of the poll. Drum uses the example of a poll with a three per cent margin of error, showing a two-point lead for a candidate. The chart show you there's a 75 per cent chance the candidate is in the lead, even though it's within the margin of error of the poll.

Aha. Never again will I fall victim of the "virtual tie" CW when it comes to polling. And I've bookmarked his chart for future use. Thank you, Mr. Drum.

8:53:42 PM