June 8, 1995
CAR ON THE POLITICS BEAT
ONLINE SOURCES
By: Elisabeth Donovan, Miami Herald research manager

Updated October 1997 with new current addresses, URLS and sites

    There are lots of places to go to find some of the information you're looking for if you have to cover politicians, candidates, or interest groups. Whether your scope is national, statewide, or local, an information specialist can find you crucial leads and data that can make your coverage better. Here are some suggestions for online sources on the politics beat:

LOOKING FOR SOURCES:

• EMAIL: Profnet can find you someone to talk to about a specific issue or topic: send an email address to profnet@profnet.com. You can call Profnet if you're in a hurry: 800-776- 3638.
• LISTSERVS: often include postings from experts who you could contact: some listservs covering political topics include:
  • Politics, an e-conference for the serious discussion of politics (at U. of Central Florida): subscribe at listserv@ucf1vm.cc.ucf.edu
  • Polcomm, on political communication (at VMI): comserve@vm.its.vpi.edu
  • Statepol, on state politics (at U.Md): listserv@umab.umd.edu
• WORLD WIDE WEB:
  • Richard Kimber's Political Resources at the University of Keele has lots of links to political science organizations and other political sources
  • The American Political Science Association has email addresses of political scientists.
  • The Electronic Activist has email addresses of politicians and media outlets by state.
  • The Kennedy School of Government maintains a good guide to all things political.
  • Project Vote Smart maintains a Reporters Source Book, an excellent guide to politics.
  • Policy.com has links to think tanks, policy and political organizations;
  • The Internet Nonprofit Center can locate nonprofits.
• DATABASES: Encyclopedia of Associations (Dialog file 114 or on Nexis) can find an organization, interest group, or association with experts on issues. Academic Index (Dialog file 88) or Dissertation Abstract (Dialog file 35) or U.S. Political Science Documents (Dialog file 93) can find experts who've written about political issues.

LOOKING FOR STORY IDEAS:

• WWW: Lots of political interest groups have web sites. Check out the addresses above. There are good pages for political news and background on politicians and politics at AllPolitics, CapWeb, Project Vote Smart, and The Jefferson Project.
• NEWSGROUPS that might have good discussion on politics: alt.activism.d; talk.politics.guns; alt.politics.elections; alt.politics.clinton alt.politics.sex; alt.politics.white-power; talk.politics.medicine; etc.
• ONLINE FORUMS: Compuserve has a Democratic Forum and a Republican Forum. Compuserve, Prodigy and AOL have political discussion forums; C-Span, Washington Week in Review, and CQ have areas on AOL.
• Party Web pages also have discussion groups or chats. See the Republican Party page, the Digital Democrats page; the Right Side of the Web page; or the Turn Left page.

LOOKING FOR STATISTICS/SPECIFIC FACTS:

• WWW SITES:
  • Project Vote Smart's Web page has data on presidential candidates and national issues.
  • Thomas, at http:thomas.loc.gov has text of bills; you can search by keywords, bill number, sponsor, etc. It also has search of Congressional Record.
  • The National Congress of State Legislatures links to various state legislatures' pages where sometimes bill texts, status, etc. can be found.
  • (Florida's is at http://www.leg.state.fl.us/)
  • The Reporters' Committee for Freedom of the Press has a page where you can find out how to get state government information.
  • Government Documents in the News is an excellent page from the University of Michigan and gets you linked to lots of government information.
  • FedStats will find lots of government produced statistics easily.
• DATABASES:
  • The Federal Election Commission has a database of campaign finance. You can search by candidate, donor, or PAC. Contact the FEC at 800/424-9530 to get a signon: you pay in advance for online time at a rate of $25/hr. You can download the databases from recent years from the FEC Web page; even better is the FECInfo site. The Center for Responsive Politics also has interesting contribution and asset information.
  • Lexis has a searchable database of campaign finance records in the CMPGN library. Included are FEC files , Congressional honoraria receipts, and state campaign finance reports from California and New York. Lexis also has Incumbent voting records for Congress and other incumbent background information. (LEXIS-NEXIS is at 800/543-6862)
  • Nexis, Dialog, Datatimes and Dow Jones all carry text of articles from newspapers, magazines, and special interest journals that can pinpoint data on a topic or issue.
  • Local or state-based databases can provide information about candidates' background or in some cases, on campaign funding, election results, etc.

LOOKING FOR DATASETS:

• FEC campaign finance records can be downloaded for analysis. (Don't forget the National Library on Money and Politics)
• State campaign finance records may be available from state elections office.
• See the NTIS book, Directory of U.S. Government Datafiles for Mainframes & Microcomputers, to locate U.S. government data available on issues.
• To locate Federal statistics online: FedStats. And check the University of Michigan site.
• Check out state government Web sites for state data: Florida spending records are available on the Comptroller's Web page; economic statistics at the Governor's budget page; election statistics and campaign contributions are available on the Florida Elections Dept. Florida is publishing lots of databases including Corporations, Corrections statistics and Inmate releases, Professional licenses, and lots more.

LOOKING FOR BACKGROUND ARTICLES:

• Newspapers, magazines, technical and industry journals are available for searching on Nexis, Dialog, Datatimes, and Dow Jones database services.
• I-Quest on Compuserve can find articles from a variety of sources including most of the above.
• Specific magazines and newspapers have varying amounts of articles on their sites on the Interent, America Online, Prodigy, or Compuserve. To find papers with searchable archives, use Margot Williams' page at the SLA News Division
• Search for individual papers on the web at the Editor & Publisher page or the American Journalism Review page. AJR's page also finds magazines and broadcast sources.
• CARL Uncover can search thousands of magazines to find references to articles on your topic and can fax you the articles you want for a fee.
• News Works and NewsBot can all find recent articles, stories, or broadcast reports on a current news topic.
• Some interest groups maintain articles from their journals, as well as source data, press releases, and lots more data. A good example is the NRA Home Page at http://www.nra.org/welcome.html.

LOOKING FOR SOURCE DOCUMENTS:

• Government Documents in the News
• White House Publications
• GPO Access, from the Govt. Printing Office, has databases of laws, regulations, bills, Federal Register, and lots of government publications.
• U.S. House of Representatives' Internet Law Library finds laws, bills, and documents, at http://law.house.gov/
• Lexis and Westlaw carry texts of laws, bills, court decisions, regulatory decisions and rules, and many other types of government documents in searchable form.

LOOKING FOR PUBLIC RECORDS

    Besides the above data on candidate's voting records or campaign finance, public records can provide useful data for candidate backgrounding or public official accountability. Available data depends on records available in various states and counties. There are some national companies that will search records in many states, including credit header searches, etc.

Here's what public records we have available in our readership area:


• State of Florida: Corporation, UCC and Fictitious names filings; driver license, driving history, accident records, vehicle registration including histories. Business Regulations licenses (medical, cosmetology, barbers, surveyors, nursing homes, etc.); Division of Licensing licenses (private investigators, security guards, concealed weapons permits); Workers' Compensation filings; marriage licenses, real estate. Some of these are now available on the Web for free: see above.
• Providers for statewide Florida records: Database Technologies, Pompano Beach, FL, (800)279-7710 (also has national records, and some records from other states, including extensive records from Texas).
• International Research Bureau, Tallahassee, 800-447-2112
• Compuserve has Secretary of State, Driver License and vehicle registration, by arrangement with DMV. DMV records also available from TML Information Services at 800/743-7891.
• County: (in Dade) criminal records, civil suits, marriage licenses, occupational licenses, building permits, waste collection, recording index, property appraiser. (In Broward) Criminal records, civil suits, property appraiser. Access to county records is arranged through the county.
• Lexis, Information America, and Prentice-Hall Online offer databases of state and county records in most states and many major counties, including real estate, bankruptcy and corporate records.
• TRW/REDI Real Estate has real estate records from many states.
• Credit search agencies (such as WDIA's National Credit Information system) offer various public records searches, too, usually with a delay.
• Information America now has a Web search page, called Know-X where you can search for lawsuits, real estate, businesses, bankruptcies, and lots more in several states. Searching is free or a reasonable cost during working hours; full record retrieved can be charged to a credit card, and reasonable.
• There are several other Web pages that offer various kinds of public records searches, among them WDIA, The American Information Network, CSRA Online, and Deep Data. Most of these are fairly costly.