Casey Cora's Page

So, I've been asked to find local bloggers in our coverage area for a possible ongoing print feature.

I thought that would be relatively easy, but I'm having a crazy hard time. That could be for a number of reasons, but I'm beginning to believe that no one's blogging local affairs in our patch on a regular basis.

Why? Most reporters here say their beats aren't being touched by anyone else. Ditto for other general local affairs. (Which is great for leverage in our news coverage, but that's a wh… Continue

Can anyone suggest resources for making an interactive map for an upcoming municipal election?

I cover a city split up into six districts, several of which are electing new trustees or re-electing the incumbents. There's also a mayoral contest.

I was thinking I could take a map of the city and overlay some sort of opaque layer of color over each district, then bring a pop-up box with the candidate's bio as well as some additional info.

I know GoogleMaps would make for a workmanlike version of… Continue

The higher-ups here have asked me to draft a plan to bring a longstanding sports feature into the future. It's a Q & A with about 85 local high school students, all interviewed individually, about being their school's "best and brightest."

The paper already has a Facebook account, although it's somewhat neglected.

Presuming the students have a FB or other social networking account, I'm thinking we (the paper) could invite these kids to join a "best and brightest" group on our FB site. We'd… Continue

So, our CAR ace has put together a preliminary framework in Django, I've been collecting data on homicides in our area since the first of the year. We have several searchable, sortable categories (age, race, address, homicide location, etc. ) and subcategories (weapon, weapon type, relationship to suspect/victim, etc.) and so far, so good.

The idea is to build a page about homicides, and I've got tons of good story ideas because of it, both for print and multimedia.

But I'd to hate make all th… Continue

Three e-mail accounts. A professional blog, a personal blog (this), and an experimental blog. del.icio.us bookmarks. A MySpace page and a neglected Facebook account.

Who's got the time? A guy's gotta squeeze some work in there, too.

There's no shortage of options to consider - social networks, blogging, databases, Flash, etc. - and it's all exciting. I'm thrilled to learn it all. Really, I am.

But am I the only one who thinks it's hard enough to simply keep tabs on what's new? And that's sayi… Continue