On the Internet — Uplink Archive

A guide for journalists covering political campaigns, providing web resources for researching candidate positions, voting records, speeches, and campaign finances across multiple stages of campaign reporting.

Campaign coverage requires different kinds of information at different stages of coverage and for particular types of stories. Here are some excellent web sites for campaign reporting.

Make an issue of it

Get background on an issue from Project Vote Smart site at http://www.vote-smart.org/ It links to organizations interested in issues ranging from abortion to environment to international trade and welfare, poverty and homelessness.

CapWeb's Political Page at http://policy.net/capweb/political.html has links to PACs and political interest groups, as well as all of the political parties.

Democracy Place USA, a new service of the Soundprint Media Center, promises weekly updates on key issues around the country. It offers polls, and a discussion list only for journalists. It's at http://soundprint.org/-democracy/

The On-line Political Information Network, provided by the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, http://ksgwww.harvard.edu/~ksgpress/opinhome.htm, links to campaign and election information. The home page also offers experts.

Check what they said

Politics USA, from the National Journal and the American Political Network - http://politicsusa.com/PoliticsUSA/ - allows for selective comparisons of candidates' positions on several key issues.

The texts of speeches and public announcements made by candidates can be a great way to check for conflicting, or convenient, statements. Search archives of Presidential documents, speeches and information located on the Internet at http://www.whitehouse.gov and the text of legislation and the Congressional Record on Thomas at http://thomas.loc.gov/

Most of the candidates are also putting together websites with background information and speeches. Find a list of the candidates' websites at Primary Destination: New Hampshire's Candidate InfoBank at http://www.fosters.com/FOSTERS/cgi-bin/walk.cgi/FOSTERS/info/d2/

Comprehensive candidates' pages, by party then candidate name can be found at http://www.webpub.com/prez/ Use PR Newswire at http://www.quote.com/info/prnews.html to read news releases from U.S. government agencies, members of Congress, and congressional committees.

See how they voted

Track Voting Records. Contact the legislator's office; it should keep a list of voting attendance and the vote cast. For a compilation of contact information for the 104th Congress members go to http://ast1.spa.umn.edu/juan/congress.html

Also, find out how your congresspeople voted at the "How did your senators and representative vote?" site, http://www.timeinc.com/cgi-bin/congress-votes. Fill in your zip code and the voting records of your senators and representatives will be listed.

The 1994 National Environmental Scoreboard lists the voting records on environmental issues at http://www.econet.apc.org/lcv/lcv94/scorecard.html

Follow the money

Mother Jones put together a wonderful site on following campaign spending: "The Best Congress Money Can Buy" which lets you plug in the name of a candidate and search 1991-1994 PAC contributions and '91-'92 individual contributions. The results come in a bar graph with the special interest group's contribution charted with other PACs. This great application is at http://www.mojones.com/coinop_congress/data_viewer/data_viewer.html

Check out C-Span's campaign contribution site at gopher://c-span.org:70/11/Resource/fec. It includes tables that show PAC contributions to legislators.

Also, the Federal Election Commission's new ftp site offers extensive summary data in zipped files http://ftp.fec.gov. Use the program PKUnzip to pull out the tables that show, for instance, how much each PAC spent. Save the text files that explain how the data was put together.

Locate discussion areas on the Internet on particular campaign topics or candidates. There are also discussion areas on issues such as abortion, disarmament, and military.

The following list of web site and Internet resources is extracted from the Poynter's Guide to Resources for Campaign and Election Coverage. For the complete story, go to http://www.poynter.org/poynter/elect2.html For links to sources on hot news stories, go to http://www.nando.net/prof/poynter/hrintro.html

Nora Paul is the author of "Computer Assisted Research," available from the Poynter Institute and NICAR. She can be reached at (813) 821-9494, or send e-mail to npaul@poynter.org.