Interesting: Hersh, Bamford On Cultivating Sources

Interesting discussion of cultivating high-level sources for investigative projects on Cecil Rosner's blog. Cecil, a CBC investigative vet, attended the Investigative Reporters and Editors conference in Baltimore and reports on a discussion on sources by renowned journalists James Bamford and Seymour Hersh, who have broken some of the decade's best stories on the intelligence world.

TAGS: intelligence, sources

Congats To Us!

Congratulations to us! The Canadian Centre for Investigative Reporting (of which I'm v-p) has just gotten word from the Canada Revenue Agency's charities directorate: We now have charity status - the first media organization of this kind to be granted the status in Canada.

Congratulations first and foremost must go to our tireless and dogged executive director, Bilbo Poynter.

Stay tuned to the CCIR website and Facebook page for more exciting centre news and programming soon, including a fundraiser-slash-panel discussion in Toronto in August.

Tools: What's the Meaning of Life? Ask Google's Freaky New Brain

Just added three cool sites to my "Resources: Tools & Search" bar of links in the right-hand column. Wolfram, Google's freaky new artificial intelligence sideline, offers two really interesting new tools I've linked down there:

- Wolfram/Alpha, a searchable artificial intelligence tool that computes answers to your questions (including, for example, "What is the meaning of life?") Some say Wolfram/Alpha is so smart it'll change the internet.

- The Wolfram Mathematica Online Integrator, an engine that performs computations using 2,500-plus math functions

The third site is WordReference.com, a professional-quality online translation and definitions tool that includes a searchable and query-able forum where linguists discuss tricky translation questions.

TAGS: tools, online journalism