Four in the morning

1. Tribune Co., owner of the Los Angeles Times, is looking to diversify its advertising dollar with Tribune Hispanic. Ed Padgett

2. The Los Angeles Times has hired Jack Dolan of the Miami Herald to beef up its database journalism in Sacramento. LAO

3. Newspapers' silver lining rides on a big gray cloud. Alan Mutter

4. Are we all becoming pawns on a vast digital chessboard? Newsweek

Data camp

California Watch has teamed with several other media outlets, including the Sunlight Foundation and Craigslist founder Craig Newmark, to host a one-day seminar on database journalism. From the press release:

The one day gathering is open to developers, journalists, community organizers, policy wonks, students and others interested in working with government data to provide insights and information into California and its communities. A variety of issues will be tackled including computer-assisted reporting, data visualization, data access, data transparency, and data management.

The data camp will be held November 7 in San Francisco.

The biggest loser

The Sacramento Bee has a database where you can check how much your city - or local redevelopment agency - stands to lose due to state budget cuts. SacBee

Eureka!

A data mine gold mine for anyone wanting to keep tabs on California's shifting demographics, business trends, legal landscape, and most every statistic collected by the state. The state has created an online searchable data base full of info from births and deaths to water, maps and exports.

Here's some of what's included, according to Government Technology magazine:

• vital statistics such as population, birth, death, and marriage data;
• more than 50 million data records on education;
• imports and exports coming through California ports,
• traffic counts on state highways;
• driving statistics, fatalities, accidents and injuries;
• travel and tourism;
• water data; and the
• Cal-Atlas Web site, which provides geospatial data and allows others to contribute their geospatial data.

Happy mining.

Tracking failure (and success)

Database reporting is a somewhat new trend in Internet journalism. Publishers can track data changes over a period of time and provide readers with periodic updates, whether it be the latest homicide or broken promise.

In its relatively short lifespan, the nonprofit ProPublica has become a master of the database, compiling all of "midnight regulations" in the last days of the Bush presidency, for example. Yesterday, the news site launched the "DNA backlog tracker" that will monitor the progress five law enforcement agencies make, or don't make, in eliminating their backlogs of untested DNA evidence. The list includes two California agencies, the Los Angeles Police Department and California Department of Justice, as well as the FBI, Illinois State Police and Virginia Department of Forensic Science. ProPublica is taking suggestions for other agencies to add to the list.