Power reporting

As I've mentioned in previous pieces here at Suite101.com, the Internet is teeming with resource guides put together by working journalists. At the risk of overloading your bookmarks (and mine), I hope to highlight some of the most useful ones in the months ahead.

Among the very best sites in this category, I'd say, is Bill Dedman's Power Reporting at http://powerreporting.com. I'm embarrassed I haven't mentioned it before now--it's tremendously helpful site.

Dedman, a pioneer in computer-assisted reporting, won the Pulitzer Prize in investigative reporting in 1989 for "The Color of Money," an industry-altering series on racial discrimination among mortgage lenders. He's now an editor at the Chicago Sun-Times, and he travels around the country training newsrooms on how to make better use of the Internet in their day-to-day coverage of events.

Power Reporting offers a wide array of links to research tools. I'll list a few of the areas that caught my eye, but I'd recommend setting aside a half-hour or so to more fully explore the site. There are quite a few gems in the pile of links.

You'll find the usual run of topic areas here -- search engines, people finders, reference shelf, government links -- plus quite categories that often aren't plumbed as extensively at other journalist-produced sites. Power Reporting includes, for example, extensive links that would be valuable to reporters researching nonprofit agencies.

The most valuable aspect of the site is Beat by Beat, a lengthy list of useful links by coverage area. Here you'll find lists of Web sites valuable to reporters and editors covering aging, city and suburban issues, the environment, guns, work-related issues, and more.

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