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Al's Morning Meeting

Home > Reporting, Writing & Editing > Al's Morning Meeting
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Al Tompkins
Story ideas that you can localize and enterprise. Posted by 7:30 a.m. Mon-Fri.
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A dozen sites
I'm diggin'


*1. StinkyJournalism.org's "Dubious Polling" Awards list is worth a read.

*2. Find out why a six-hour flight now takes seven. Airlines are "baking in" extra time to make up for long delays.

*3. Check out RTDNA's News and Terrorism workshop chat site.

4. BusinessWeek has highlighted big corporations that are pouring millions into Haiti relief.

5. Amazing: how phone apps helped save a man's life after he was buried by the Haiti earthquake.

6. The New York Times explains how cancer-treatment radiation saves lives, and ruins some.

*7. Here are some great databases that newsrooms have created to help connect people with their community.

8. A new study explores the media habits of teens.

9. The pros and cons of evangelizing on Facebook.

10. The FCC investigates the health and future of local news.

11. Brookings assesses Obama's first year in office

12. Why you better be careful when covering 100th birthdays!

All of my Diggin' sites are saved on Poynter's del.icio.us page.

EDITOR'S NOTE: Al's Morning Meeting is a compendium of ideas, edited story excerpts and other materials from a variety of Web sites, as well as original concepts and analysis. When the information comes directly from another source, it will be attributed and a link will be provided whenever possible. The column is fact-checked, but relies on the accuracy and integrity of the original sources cited. We will correct errors and inaccuracies when we become aware of them.


Tag Clouds Show Most Used Words in DNC Speeches
I thought it would be interesting to see which key words speakers choose to use when addressing the national political conventions.

So I dropped the speech texts into a little piece of software and generated a tag cloud that shows which words they use and how often they use them. Take a look at my page here.

This week, Sen. Hillary Clinton leaned most heavily on "America," "American," "children" and "Obama".

Michelle Obama used the words "Barack," "families," "people," "dream," "hope," "jobs," "work" and "world" multiple times.

I will update the tag clouds with speeches from President Bill Clinton and Sens. Joe Biden and Barack Obama.

I have already set up a page for the tag clouds I will build from the Republican convention.
Posted at 4:23 PM on Aug. 27, 2008
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