Everyone has been in contact with lazy journalism — whether its one article looking a bit too full of market-speak or a group of articles using the same descriptive terms — but it’s always been very difficult to suss out whether it’s a coincidence or a purposeful cut-and-paste job. Sunlight Foundation, a non-profit focusing on governmental transparency, has decided to tackle the problem head-on with its new website, Churnalism.

If you think a particular article looks, well, suspicious, simply paste the link’s URL or  the text directly into Churnalism’s free scanner (or add on a free browser extension) and the tool will match phrases to press releases within its database. The tool scans through many popular PR hubs, including PR Newswire and MarketWire, and it has also revealed it can grab text from Wikipedia and the US government’s websites. You can compare the article side-by-side and see what was lifted from source material — and whether it’s taken out of context.

Check out the video on Churnalism below. Read more

It’s no secret that one of the keys to being a successful journalist these days is mastering the art of combing the Internet. And, a large portion of finding great stuff on the Internet relies on properly and efficiently utilizing clever tools that elevates your online skills from “great” to “practically superhuman.”

Chrome is now the most popular Internet browser, and for plenty of good reason: in addition to having a straightforward search bar and integration with all of Google’s great tools (auto-complete in the browser!), users can customize their web experience with a host of add-ons. These add-ons, called “extensions” by the browser itself, can do amazing things — and boost your reporting abilities to make you more organized, connected, and efficient.

Here are five extensions that are popular for their great utility in any journalist’s arsenal, and they are all absolutely free to download.

What’s your favorite Chrome extension? Let us know in the comments.

OneTab

Reporters everywhere are singing the praises of OneTab because it beautifully solves one of the biggest pain points for online journalists: the agonizing slow-down of a computer once it crosses its maximum threshold for open browser tabs. If you tend to have dozens and dozens of tabs open at any given time, this extension will speed up your computer without losing all of your hard-earned tabs. Read more

This week, Apple finally announced support for two-step verification for both the iCloud and AppleID. Now, users must use a second device to input a special code in order to access account specifics and iTunes purchases. It may seem like a small, or even unnecessary step, but type as fast as you can to implement it now.

Two-step verification is important for everyone, but it’s especially important for journalists. Implement it now, or risk losing your online identity forever.

One of the hottest stories concerning online privacy and hacking of journalists happened just last year, when Wired‘s Mat Honan was the target of hackers. In one fell swoop, the hackers broke into his gMail, his Twitter and his AppleID, erasing the memory of all of his devices and holding all of his social media hostage. After a thorough investigation, Honan found out that the hackers were able to do all of this simply by calling up Amazon and Apple’s customer service to break into his account, and follow back his daisy chain of email accounts to break into the rest of his life.

So how does two-step verification factor into Honan’s earth-shattering problem? Read more

A new Kickstarter campaign kicked off this weekend with a goal of raising $32,000 to create educational tools for the “next generation of news-application developers.” If they reach their goal, these are the first eight courses they’ll teach:

• Django, taught by Jeremy Bowers of The Washington Post
• Information Management, taught by  Christopher Groskopf of NPR
• Ruby on Rails, taught by Jeff Larson of ProPublica
• DevOps, taught by Jacqui Maher of The New York Times
• Charting and Visualization, taught by Michelle Minkoff of The Associated Press
• Responsive Design, taught by Ryan Pitts of The Spokesman Review
• Mapping, taught by Ken Schwenke of The LA Times
• Cybersecurity and Online Privacy, taught by Mike Tigas of The Spokesman Review

As legislative sessions start to kick off in states around the country, newsrooms will undoubtedly be looking for ways to cover various negotiations and budget crises. The idea of a “budget balancing” game is nothing new — lots of newsrooms have tried it — but many have taken their own conceptual approaches. Here are a few different examples:

1. New York Times – Budget Puzzle: You Fix the Budget

This approach lets users select multiple options (tax increases and spending cuts) then watch on a scale how much money those decisions make in the short-term and longterm. You can read more about the methodology on the Economix blog.

Best feature: See impacts on both the short-term and long-term 

2. LA Times — California Budget Balancer

The LA Times first lets you select a starting point based on how much you’d spend on public schools, and from there, you can granularly reduce or eliminate funding in other areas using a slider. As you make decisions, you watch the remaining deficit drop. Unlike the NYT approach, the LA Times lets the user have more control over the values inputted, rather than basing it off real-life proposals.

Best feature: When you’ve come to a proposal you’re happy with, you can see your breakdown for where money is allocated, then share it on social media.  Read more