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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. The Electronic Frontier Foundation has outlined how the IRS uses social media in investigations.

2. What's with all the Google anti-trust lawsuits?

*3. The Washington Post reports on why TV reporters have to be  Jacks of All Trades now.

*4. Look at this list of expenses that you might think are tax deductible, but aren't.

5. The number of U.S. millionaires rose 16 percent last year.

6. Find out why there will be a national Eggo waffle shortage until summer.

7. The New York Times explains how women in the work force helped save Social Security.

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

*9. Watch this online interactive story of the death of journalist Arthur Kasherman.

10. CBS Radio News' Peter King explains how he broadcast from Haiti in the early days after the quake.

11. Find out how healthy your county is.

12. Levelcam lets you stabilize your handheld video.

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.


Wednesday Edition: The Forgotten Soldiers

I want to dedicate today's Al's Morning Meeting to a monumental project by The Frederick (Md.) News-Post. The project looks at how 88,000 American soldiers are still missing from as far back as World War II. More than that, the paper used government records to find nine Frederick soldiers who are missing. Eight of those served in the Korean war, and one served in Vietnam.

The work includes a big collection of interactive elements including maps and databases.

frederick news-post pow
I asked David Simon, assistant city editor, about the project and about how you can use the databases to localize the story yourself. I have to believe that this would be an enormously successful project for any newsroom.

How did your paper get started on this very large project?


The project began with a simple press release about an American Legion dinner to honor the county's sole Vietnam War veteran who remains unaccounted for. He's been featured in our paper a number of times, but we began wondering if veterans of other wars might be unaccounted for. Once we started digging through the databases, we were amazed at the number of unaccounted-for soldiers whose stories have never been told.

Where did you go to get your database? How did you localize it?


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The databases for each war, beginning with World War II, are available at www.dtic.mil/dpmo, the Web site for the Defense Prisoner of War/Missing Personnel Office. The databases for the following wars can be sorted by state: Korean War, Cold War and the Vietnam War. Once you have the state list, a column provides information about the soldier's hometown, and it's pretty easy to find the soldiers from your coverage area.

Once we had the names, we worked with the public information officers at DPMO to locate surviving family members who would be willing to talk. We also scoured our obituary archives searching for family members or friends.

We had about a 50-percent hit rate for family willing to discuss the soldiers' stories, but the ones we did find made for compelling journalism. For the other stories, we relied on DPMO's "scrub sheets" -- the Department of Defense's write-up of the circumstances under which the soldiers were lost.

So could other journalists localized the database too? What would they need to do to get the kind of data that you found?


When it comes to taking a large database and bringing it to the local level, this is one of the easier projects to tackle. Again, the data is sorted by state, so sitting down with someone who knows your coverage area extremely well and the list from your state would yield the names you're looking for.

Eighty-eight thousand is a stunning number of unidentified or missing military dead. In what wars did most "go missing"?


Here's the rough breakdown by war, according to DPMO: World War II -- 78,000; Korean War -- 8,100; Vietnam War -- 1,800; Cold War -- 125; 1991 Gulf War -- 3.


Why is it that we have fewer and fewer missing soldiers in later wars, since the first Gulf War for example?


Part of that has to do with advancements in identification technology, such as DNA testing. Also, the military has made an effort to ensure that remains will be identifiable -- since 1991, the Department of Defense has been storing blood from every military service member. It now has bloodstain cards of more than 5 million current and former troops.

Once you knew who the local missing were, how did you find their families, and what concerns did you have about dredging up the past?


For some of the service members, we worked with DPMO officers, who contacted the families first to check if they would be willing to share their stories. One thing we did in each case of contacting family members was make sure they understood the intent of the project. We learned from a piece we did on coping with loss and the psychology of closure that because no funeral took place, those who grieve carry that burden for years, some to this day.

It was paramount that the families understand our goal of telling the stories that no one had heard and that the focus would be on those who were lost.

How are you telling this story differently on the Web compared to the newspaper?


The Web offers several features that we couldn't do in print. The most prominent is a clickable map of the last-known locations of each of the "Frederick nine," as we've come to call them in the office. By clicking on a pinpoint location, the soldier's story pops up in another window. It was crucial that we try to give readers an understanding of what happened to these nine men and why their lives (and deaths) are important. The map is a tool that brings setting to the story in a way that words do not.

The second main Web feature is a documentary-style video that incorporates all elements of the project. Interviews with family members, DNA researchers, a soldier who guards the Tomb of the Unknowns and experts in the psychology of loss are all featured. The video is meant to convey a complete story arc, beginning with loss and returning to the continued search for those still left behind. [Click on link under "Multimedia" to see the video.]

How important was photojournalism and graphic design to this project? How were those journalists involved in the development of this project?


We view graphics and photojournalism as essential and equal partners in our work, and in this case, it was imperative to get those departments involved early. Our main graphic designer for the project is a history buff, and his input about the wars was welcomed and without question improved the project. The primary photographer/videographer was involved with every shoot, to ensure consistency and provide ownership of the project.

Throughout the project, snags arose, but the designer and photographer were in constant contact with reporters about what they needed to fill out their work better. For example, our videographer wanted extra shots of the repository containing bloodstain cards, so we arranged another interview and tour.


Missing in the Cold War

We usually think of MIAs as being from a declared war. But take a look at this section of the government's database. It is from the Cold War days where Americans on various surveillance missions were shot down. There are listings of all of the missing crews on this page.


What is Being Done for MIAs?

Look at the work being done in various countries to account for the missing: [The following are PDF documents.]

Read about the Bring Them Home Alive Act and the Persian Gulf War POW/MIA Accountability Act.

Click here to see a state-by-state listing of MIAs in Vietnam.


Meet the Soldiers' Families

Families of the missing may attend monthly government briefings held around the country. Here are the briefings still to come this year:

  • Cincinnati, Ohio -- July 21
  • Kansas City, Mo. -- Aug. 18
  • Washington, D.C. -- Oct. 18-20
  • Phoenix, Ariz. -- Nov. 17


    We are always looking for your great ideas. Send Al a few sentences and hot links.

    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 depends on the accuracy and integrity of the original sources cited. Errors and inaccuracies found will be corrected.

Posted by Al Tompkins at 11:53 PM on Jul. 3, 2007
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