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New Census site and blog: Research Matters
The Census Bureau has a new web site and blog that focus on research at the Bureau.
- Research @ Census. This new Web page is a gateway to the world of research at the Census Bureau. Visit the site to learn about innovations to measure and understand America through improved statistics, statistical products and analysis. The new blog -- "Research Matters" -- features the work of researchers from all areas of the Census Bureau. Research ranges from substantive topics of interest in demography, economics and other social sciences to methodological questions, such as the role of statistical modeling in surveys, designs for the 10-year census, research on record linkage and confidentiality protection. Census Bureau researchers include geographers, statisticians, economists, demographers and more. (press release)
- Research Matters, U.S. Census Bureau. Welcome to Research Matters, a new blog highlighting research at the Census Bureau. We aim to discuss important research in government statistics, and stimulate informed debate. Research ranges from substantive topics of interest in demography, economics and other social sciences, to methodological questions, such as the role of statistical modeling in surveys, designs for the Decennial Census, research on record linkage and confidentiality protection.
New FTC tech blog
Ed Felton, the Chief Technologist at the FTC, has a new blog which he describes as "published by the Federal Trade Commission" but expressing the views "of the Chief Technologist" and not those of the Chairman or the Commission. The blog will focus on technology issues. It is hosted by wordpress.com not by a .gov site.
- Tech@FTC. As the nation’s consumer protection agency, the FTC works on technology issues every day. You’ll see lots of discussion of technology in our reports, cases, speeches and testimonies, not to mention the consumer and business education pieces we publish. But we haven’t had a venue for speaking, more directly and less formally, to the technically minded public about tech issues. That’s what this blog is for. Our goal is to talk about technology in a way that is sophisticated enough to be interesting to hard-core techies, but straightforward enough to be accessible to the broad public that knows something about technology but doesn’t qualify as expert.
- RSS feed.
Oil and Gas Information Sources
Here, from the Columbia Journalism Review, is a Reporter's Toolbox of primary sources of information related to gasoline prices and oil production in the US, which journalists can use to evaluate and clarify the political rhetoric.
- Reporter's Toolbox: Oil and Gas Prices, By Curtis Brainard, Columbia Journalism Review (March 22, 2012). Every year, news stories about US gasoline prices appear in the early spring and remain popular until the end of the summer driving season in September. But "pain at the pump" takes on special significance during presidential election years, as Republicans and Democrats use gas prices to attack one another's energy policies and curry favor with voters. This year, the GOP is blaming the Obama administration for rising prices, but in 2008, it was Barack Obama, then a senator from Illinois, who was pointing his finger at Washington. Make no mistake, all such accusations rest on shaky ground. The price of gasoline is determined primarily by the price of crude oil (in February it accounted for 72 percent of the cost of regular unleaded and 65 percent of the cost of diesel), which is established by a global market over which US energy policy holds little short-term sway. The 2012 campaign has already seen innumerable claims and counterclaims related to gas prices and domestic oil production. Journalists should be fact checking all those statements, letting their readers and viewers know whether they represent truth or spin. More often than not, however, they drop competing quotes into their stories without assessing their relative merits. This is lazy reporting that does a disservice to voters. We understand it can be hard to dig up the necessary background on deadline, especially while traveling.
Liberating America’s secret, for-pay laws
Cory Doctorow says: "This morning, I found a an enormous, 30Lb box waiting for me at my post-office box. Affixed to it was a sticker warning me that by accepting this box into my possession, I was making myself liable for nearly $11 million in damages. The box was full of paper, and printed on the paper were US laws -- laws that no one is allowed to publish or distribute without permission. Carl Malamud, Boing Boing's favorite rogue archivist, is the guy who sent me this glorious box of weird. I was expecting it, because he asked me in advance if I minded being one of the 25 entities who'd receive this law-bomb on deposit. I was only too glad to accept -- on the condition that Carl write us a guest editorial explaining what this was all about. He was true to his word."
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Liberating America's secret, for-pay laws, By Carl Malamud, boingboing (Mar 19, 2012).
Boing Boing Official Guest Memorandum of Law To: The Standards People Cc: The Rest of Us People From: Carl Malamud, Public.Resource.Org In Re: Our Right to Replicate the Law Without a License
Crowdsourced Public Information about Broadcasters
The New America Foundation's Media Policy Initiative has a fascinating project that asks members of the public for help in collecting FCC-required information from broadcasters and then posts that information on the Web. The Columbia Journalism Review describes the project this way:
In exchange for using the public airwaves for free, broadcast stations are required to serve their local community, a condition the FCC refers to as a station's "public-interest obligations." The standards for what counts towards satisfying these obligations used to be quite considerable, but currently, the chief requirement is that a station maintain a "public inspection file," and make it available to any member of the public that asks. In the file, stations are required to keep information including a political advertising log and a list of the community-serving programming the station has recently aired. Starting in 2010, in the context of the FCC's Future of Media Inquiry, the New America Foundation's Media Policy Initiative began asking members of the public for help in collecting these public files and posting them on the Internet. Now, with the FCC’s recent proposal to require broadcasters to post the files online -- and with TV stations' adamant opposition to the proposal -- the New America Foundation has reenergized its crowdsourcing campaign.Read the CJR interview with NAF media policy fellow Tom Glaisyer about the project and check out the online files:
- Q & A: New America Foundation's Tom Glaisyer, By Alysia Santo, Columbia Journalism Review (March 20, 2012).
- Public Interest Obligations, New America Foundation's Media Policy Initiative. (links to the collected files of records of the public interest obligations from stations around the country.)
- Public Interest Obligations: Can you help us collect data for our analysis?, by Tom Glaisyer, New America Foundation's Media Policy Initiative blog (April 20, 2010).
- What Does It Mean to Have a Public Interest Obligation in a Digital Age?, by Tom Glaisyer and Kara Hadge, New America Foundation's Media Policy Initiative blog (February 23, 2010).
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