105 Free Multimedia Journalism Tools - 2103 Version

1. 105FREE
MULTIMEDIA
JOURNALISM
TOOLS
BRADY TEUFEL
CAL POLY
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9. PLATFORMS
The platform’s primary asset is its simple ease of use, said Michael Cervieri, adjunct professor at Columbia
University’s School of International and Public Affairs. He said Tumblr users can easily publish multimedia content —
text, images, audio, video, quotes, links or chats – in just a few clicks after logging in. LINK
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10. PLATFORMS
Allows user to create a free blog quickly and easily.
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11. PLATFORMS
Allows user to create web pages in typical Google fashion -- simply and intuitively.
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12. PLATFORMS
Named one of TIME's 50 Best Websites, Weebly has an easy, drag & drop interface to create your own website.
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13. PLATFORMS
Webs.com. Make your own free website with photos, videos and ecommerce. Free web hosting.
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14. PLATFORMS
Allows user to create more sophisticated-looking Flash sites. Investigative Journalist theme.
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15. PLATFORMS
LiveJournal.com. Allows user to create more sophisticated-looking Flash sites. Investigative Journalist theme.
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16. PLATFORMS
Journalists getting into the blogging game can learn the basics about popular publishing platform WordPress with this
video by Emmy award-winning journalist and ICFJ trainer Patricio Espinoza. LINK
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17. PLATFORMS
How InJersey.com is using WordPress MU and BuddPress to create a new model for citizen journalist engagement in
New Jersey. LINK
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18. PLATFORMS
An In-Depth Review Of Pressfolios, The Newest Portfolio Site For Journalists
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19. PLATFORMS
“Everything Cuttings.me has done so far has been about making life easier for journalists — quick, easy to use and a
clean design,” founder Nicholas Holmes says here.
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20. PLATFORMS
While it’s not specifically geared to journalists, many find it useful because you can stream all your social networking
sites, videos, RSS feeds and a variety of other content into one page. Source here..
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21. PLATFORMS
Even though it isn’t exactly an online portfolio site, About.me is all about promoting yourself. Source here..
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22. WORKFLOW
Google Voice gives you one number for all your phones, voicemail as easy as email, free US long distance, etc. Push
‘4’ on your keypad, and Google Voice records your call.
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23. WORKFLOW
Google Docs for Journalists: An Introduction (DigitalNewsJournalist.com)
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24. WORKFLOW
Simply better phone calls - free visual voicemail, caller ID, call blocking, voicemail sharing and ‘ditchmail’!
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25. WORKFLOW
Rapportive replaces the ads in your GMail account with publicly available information about the person who sent you
the email: links to their social networking accounts, their photo and biographical info, even a live feed of their tweets.
Not only that, if you mouse over other email addresses included in the email, those people’s info shows up, too.
Friday, March 1, 13

26. WORKFLOW
“Pipl returned an impressive number of results for my own name, including my personal homepage, press mentions,
SEC documents, MySpace page, Amazon wishlist and profile—stuff I didn't realize or forgot was online.” (Source)
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27. WORKFLOW
“Spokeo became the first firm sued by the FTC for sale of data collected from online sources, including social media,
for employment screening purposes.” (NBCnews.com)
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28. WORKFLOW
Using Dropbox for Journalism
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29. WORKFLOW
Pixlr is a free online photo editor. Edit, adjust and filter your images.
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30. WORKFLOW
GIMP is the GNU Image Manipulation Program. It is a freely distributed piece of software for such tasks as photo
retouching, image composition and image authoring.
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31. WORKFLOW
Compfight.com is an image search engine tailored to efficiently locate images for blogs, comps, inspiration, and
research.
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32. WORKFLOW
Photosynth is a software application from Microsoft Live Labs and the University of Washington that analyzes digital
photographs and generates a three-dimensional model of the photos and a point cloud of a photographed object.
(Wikipedia)
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33. WORKFLOW
Create, share and collaboratively work on mind maps with MindMeister, the leading online mind mapping software.
Includes apps for iPhone, iPad and Android.
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34. WORKFLOW
XMind is the kind of free application that makes you forget you're not paying for the privilege of using it. (Source)
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35. WORKFLOW
Creative Commons develops, supports, and stewards legal and technical infrastructure that maximizes digital
creativity, sharing, and innovation.
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36. WORKFLOW
SimpleNote is a note-taking app that syncs what you write — whether you’re using a mobile device or a computer —
live to the Web. It’s been around for two years but got a very significant update (tags, versioning, word count, sharing)
in August. Its real power lies in its ability to work with a host of other desktop and mobile apps and browser
extensions.
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37. WORKFLOW
Piklist is not your standard plugin… it’s a system for adding power to your website. Turn WordPress into a full-
featured contact manager, customer portal and anything else you can think of.
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38. WORKFLOW
Markupwand is a PSD to HTML web app that allows you to upload PSD files and automagically converts them into
HTML & CSS, emailing you the data. (Source)
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39. WORKFLOW
Audacity Basics for Journalists (YouTube)
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40. WORKFLOW
Transcribe is a free Google Chrome extension that assists the user in transcribing audio files to text.
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41. WORKFLOW
You can add Google's professional level speech recognition support to your web pages just by adding the webkit
speech input element. (Web2Voice.com)
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42. WORKFLOW
By providing a single place to store all your newsroom's data PANDA will encourage knowledge sharing, prevent the
loss of information and slow knowledge attrition when reporters retire or change jobs. Never again should more than
one reporter FOIA the same dataset. (Source)
Friday, March 1, 13

43. WORKFLOW
New York Times to Launch Online Corrections Form (Poynter)
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44. WORKFLOW
Disqus is featured on many major publications, such as CNN, Daily Telegraph and IGN and about 750,000 blogs and
websites. (Wikipedia)
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45. WORKFLOW
Good for comment moderation: “IntenseDebate offers some truly hardcore moderation options. Customize your
settings to moderate by keywords, number of links, commenter email, and/or IP addresses.” (Source)
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46. CURATION
10 Ways Journalists Can Use Storify (ZombieJournalism.com)
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47. CURATION
Storyplanet, which was backed by MIT's Joichi Ito and former head of online at Al Jazeera English Mohamed
Nanabhay, lets journalists package content into interactive experiences
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48. CURATION
Storyful is the first news agency of the social media age. From Storyful’s Blog:
"We learned the first task of a breaking newswire in the age of social media is to avoid repeating what everyone
already knows. It is not enough to declare an event has happened. A social newswire must provide the raw material
for context, understanding and depth."
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49. CURATION
Paper.li is a content curation service. It enables people to publish newspapers based on topics they like and treat
their readers to fresh news, daily.
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50. CURATION
Scoop.it is best for curating a topic over a sustained period.
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51. CURATION
Create topic pages with photos, videos, tweets and documents. Share them with everyone.
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52. CURATION
Pearltrees is a visual and collaborative curation tool that allows users to collect, organize and share any URL they find
online.
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53. CURATION
Instapaper is an application aimed at time-shifting the consumption of online content, including journalism.
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54. CURATION
Utopic provides the fastest one-click bookmarking with auto-tagging.
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55. PUBLICATION
There are some great examples of individual writers, journalists and independent news sites using Audioboo.
Community site London-Se1.co.uk has used the app to upload audio of breaking news events, with editor James
Hatts describing the tool as having the 'idiot-proof brilliance' of the Flip camera. Meanwhile micro news site
Towcester News has started experimenting with the app - including this short interview with Formula One
commentary legend Murray Walker. "The beauty of the medium is the brevity," editor of the Onion Bag Blog, Jason
Cobb, tells Journalism.co.uk.
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56. PUBLICATION
http://soundcloud.com/101/journalists
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57. PUBLICATION
User-friendly liveblogging software.
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58. PUBLICATION
Mobile Journalism with Ustream, the world's largest live interactive streaming platform with nearly 60 million unique
monthly viewers
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59. PUBLICATION
Five Creative Uses of Document Cloud (10,000 Words)
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60. PUBLICATION
The organization uses the concept of crowdsourcing for social activism and public accountability, serving as an initial
model for what has been coined as 'activist mapping' - the combination of social activism, citizen journalism and
geospatial information. Ushahidi offers products that enable local observers to submit reports using their mobile
phones or the internet, while simultaneously creating a temporal and geospatial archive of events. Most recently, Al
Jazeera Balkans deployed Ushahidi crisis mapping platform on Feb 5, 2012 to track the snow/cold emergency in the
Balkans. (Wikipedia)
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61. ALTERNATIVE
STORYTELLING
Create, share and explore stunning high-resolution gigapixel images and panoramic photography with GigaPan's
revolutionary technology.
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62. ALTERNATIVE
STORYTELLING
Media Future Now: Dipity and “Journalism Through Digital Storytelling”
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63. ALTERNATIVE
STORYTELLING
Timeline JS Picked Up by Journalists Worldwide (Knight Lab)
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64. ALTERNATIVE
STORYTELLING
Examples of ProPublica’s Timeline Setter in action. (10,000 Words)
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65. ALTERNATIVE
STORYTELLING
Storytelling with VuVox. Examples on interactivenarratives.org.
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66. ALTERNATIVE
STORYTELLING
Interactive, embeddable and customizable wordclouds.
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67. ALTERNATIVE
STORYTELLING
This is a simple way to make your own maps and use maps for making apps.
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68. ALTERNATIVE
STORYTELLING
Data visualisation tools from IBM. Site allows users to upload data and then produce graphic representations for
others to view and comment upon.
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69. ALTERNATIVE
STORYTELLING
Google Fusion Tables are used by many news outlets to build data visualisations. Fusion Tables enables users to
transform data into visualisations such as charts and maps, which can then be embedded into news sites. Users can
also combine data sets.
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70. ALTERNATIVE
STORYTELLING
Visual.ly currently offers a sample of free infographics which journalists can create based on certain data entered,
such as a hashtag or Twitter accounts.
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71. ALTERNATIVE
STORYTELLING
Piktochart helps users create engaging presentations from their data/information
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72. ALTERNATIVE
STORYTELLING
Based on the Google Chart API, Hohli is a brilliant tool to create great charts the way you like them. It will let you
create lines, bar and pie charts, Venn diagrams, radar charts and scatter plots.
Friday, March 1, 13

73. ALTERNATIVE
STORYTELLING
Visualizing data with Tableau, a trainer's perspective
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74. ALTERNATIVE
STORYTELLING
GeoCommons delivers visual analytics through maps. We make it possible to view massive amounts of data, make
decisions and solve problems with no prior experience.
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75. ALTERNATIVE
STORYTELLING
Add interactivity to your data stories. Infogr.am is built with newsrooms in mind.
Friday, March 1, 13

76. ALTERNATIVE
STORYTELLING
Cowbird aims to be the "world's simplest and most beautiful storytelling tools", and enables users to create
multimedia stories with audio, images, text and other features.
Friday, March 1, 13

77. ALTERNATIVE
STORYTELLING
ThingLink offers the ability to make images interactive by adding points to a still image and attaching links, such as to
other content, multimedia or social media pages.
Friday, March 1, 13

78. ALTERNATIVE
STORYTELLING
According to TechCrunch, "it’s the e-commerce angle that will likely interest publishers the most", with Taggstar, with
the ability to make images "shoppable" with links to products.
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79. ALTERNATIVE
STORYTELLING
A mixed media packaging tool that allows you to make interactive documentaries in new formats with sound, videos,
pictures and text.
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80. ALTERNATIVE
STORYTELLING
The tool lets journalists create "moments", which are they key parts of a story, and can include a range of multimedia
content such as images, YouTube videos and links to outside articles and wider content. These can then plotted on a
timeline and map, with audio overlay for a narrative if required.
Friday, March 1, 13

81. ALTERNATIVE
STORYTELLING
Can Prezi be a storytelling tool for online journalists? (nextnewsroom.com)
Friday, March 1, 13

82. ALTERNATIVE
STORYTELLING
Popcorn Maker lets users place tweets, maps, links to other web content and images on top of video from YouTube
or Vimeo, or audio from SoundCloud. The original media file – whether video or audio – is added to Popcorn Maker by
pasting in the URL.
Friday, March 1, 13

83. ALTERNATIVE
STORYTELLING
Allows you to analyze relationships among civic, political and business leaders in a country, or a city, or a company or
any organized collection of people. Visualizes relationships within these power and influence networks.
Friday, March 1, 13

84. MOBILE
Turn phone into a document scanner, fax, PDF creator and more.
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85. MOBILE
Edit and share photos virtually anywhere. Touch to crop, rotate, adjust color, and add artistic effects.
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86. MOBILE
Access your entire photo library on your iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch, and Mac devices.
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87. MOBILE
Instagram is more about branding and engagement than eyeballs and dollars. After some campaign trail
experimentation, the Associated Press is encouraging its staff photographers to use their personal Instagram feeds in
a professional capacity. How Journalists are Using Instagram (readwrite.com).
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88. MOBILE
How News is Delivered Through Vine (BusinessWeek.com)
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89. MOBILE
Listen to live audio from over 3,600 police and fire scanners, weather radios, and amateur radio repeaters from
around the world (primarily in the United States and Australia, with more being added daily) on your phone.
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90. MOBILE
* Watch live and recent videos, discover upcoming events
* Broadcast live to any number of viewers using the camera of your device
* Interact with your audience by issuing a poll or chatting
* Access your Ustream Crowds and events that you’re attending
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91. MOBILE
An intelligent video editor that stitches clips together, adds transitions, and lets you add an audio track of your own.
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92. MOBILE
Scan for Wi-Fi hotspots around you
Search for public Wi-Fi anywhere in the world
View Wi-Fi hotspot detail, call location, get directions or share the hotspot
Filter results by location (cafe, hotel, etc.) or provider type
Works both online and offline
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93. MOBILE
• TRANSLATE TEXT BETWEEN 65 LANGUAGES
• TRANSLATE BY SPEAKING THE TEXT INSTEAD OF TYPING IT (17 LANGUAGES)
• USE CAMERA TO TAKE A PICTURE AND BRUSH TEXT TO TRANSLATE (AVAILABLE ON ANDROID 2.3 AND
ABOVE).
• LISTEN TO YOUR TRANSLATIONS SPOKEN ALOUD (40 LANGUAGES)
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94. MOBILE
* HANDS-FREE SPEECH RECOGNITION AT THE PRESS OF A SINGLE BUTTON.
* SEARCHABLE. NOTES ARE INDEXED FOR FAST SEARCHING.
* PASSWORD PROTECTION OPTION FOR NOTES.
* SHARE NOTES WITH SMS, EMAIL, TWITTER, AND ANY OTHER APP THAT ACCEPTS PLAIN TEXT.
Friday, March 1, 13

95. MOBILE
EVERNOTE IS AN EASY-TO-USE, FREE APP THAT HELPS YOU REMEMBER EVERYTHING ACROSS ALL OF THE
DEVICES YOU USE. PROVIDES SPEECH-TO-TEXT TRANSCRIPTION (IF ONLINE). *DOESN’T TRUNCATE .MP3
FILES RECORDED ON YOUR IPHONE.
Friday, March 1, 13

96. MOBILE
TweetDeck is your mobile browser for staying in touch with what's happening on Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare and
Buzz. TweetDeck makes it easy to stay up to date and organized no matter where you are.
Friday, March 1, 13

97. MOBILE
Banjo integrates the largest social networks to provide an on-the-ground view of what’s happening anyplace at
anytime. Reporters use it to direct msg people near breaking news locations.
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98. RESOURCES
Offers users the ability to upload and share publicly or privately PowerPoint presentations, Word documents and
Adobe PDF Portfolios.
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99. RESOURCES
The Acronym Finder is a searchable database of over 4 million acronyms, abbreviations and meanings.
Friday, March 1, 13

100. RESOURCES
The Name Engine provides the correct name pronunciations of athletes, entertainers, politicians, newsmakers, and
more. Even well-known names are often pronounced in different ways, leaving you to wonder what the correct
pronunciation is. You'll find the right answer here. Better yet, you'll actually hear the right answer.
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101. RESOURCES
Downloadable fonts with a variety of usage rights/restrictions.
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102. RESOURCES
Search through more than 297,000 free icons. Browse icon sets by category, artist, popularity, date.
Friday, March 1, 13

103. RESOURCES
EditTeach.org is a site rich with resources for copy editors and those who teach it. Tips sheets, quizzes, even Dow
Jones copy editing practice tests.
Friday, March 1, 13

104. RESOURCES
Where to find free sound effects and royalty-free music (10,000 Words)
Friday, March 1, 13

105. RESOURCES
Stories that are best enjoyed away from your desk — whether it’s on a daily commute, an airplane, a subway, or your
couch. It’s in-depth stories, perfect for the iPad, iPhone or Kindle, and apps like Read It Later, Flipboard and
Instapaper. (Longreads.com)
Friday, March 1, 13

106. RESOURCES
The purpose of Alltop is to help you answer the question, “What’s happening?” in “all the topics” that interest you.
Friday, March 1, 13

107. RESOURCES
RebelMouse is your social front page. Connect all of your networks to create a beautiful, dynamic site in seconds.
‘Five Ways to Use Social Media Curator RebelMouse’ (Poynter)
Friday, March 1, 13

108. RESOURCES
Leveraging Klout in journalism (example from The Buttry Diary): “Went to Klout, searched “mets” (both topics and
influencers), then sent @tweets to the handful of the “experts” with higher-than-average Klout scores.Result was a
few retweets and links … and our most-viewed story of the day. Seems like a great way to help move anything in the
universe of “features.”
Friday, March 1, 13

109. RESOURCES
Directory of all congressional Twitter handles.
Friday, March 1, 13

110. RESOURCES
This may be one of the most useful tools ever invented for media professionals, particularly those working in public
relations. Muck Rack has launched a platform to filter and analyze how journalists are covering the news in real-time.
Its best feature is a handy tracking tool that emails users when journalists tweet about relevant terms.
(TheNextWeb.com)
Friday, March 1, 13

111. RESOURCES
This may be one of the most useful tools ever invented for media professionals, particularly those working in public
relations. Muck Rack has launched a platform to filter and analyze how journalists are covering the news in real-time.
Its best feature is a handy tracking tool that emails users when journalists tweet about relevant terms.
(TheNextWeb.com)
Friday, March 1, 13

112. RESOURCES
This may be one of the most useful tools ever invented for media professionals, particularly those working in public
relations. Muck Rack has launched a platform to filter and analyze how journalists are covering the news in real-time.
Its best feature is a handy tracking tool that emails users when journalists tweet about relevant terms.
(TheNextWeb.com)
Friday, March 1, 13

113. RESOURCES
www.digitaljournalism.org/
105_free_multimedia_journalism_tools
Friday, March 1, 13