Google software for journalistic storytelling was on display Tuesday at UH, during the second and final day of the region’s Society of Professional Journalists conference.
Mary Nahorniak, a teaching fellow for Google News Lab, led the workshops and started by showing the usefulness of Google services, such as advanced search, which can help to narrow search results to specific formats, topics and organizations. For example, she said, filtered searches can exclude certain terms, include specific URL formats, search information on websites that are deleted, reformatted or withholding information, such as on The Wayback Machine.
Nahorniak then dove into some of the different software that Google offers to continue to make research and reporting more efficient. Google Scholar, for example, is a separate Google search engine that sorts through scholarly articles, case laws and scientific journals to sort results that prioritize those without paywalls in order to ensure that most of the results that appear are free to read.
Data Commons, for example, can share and visualize data. Fact Check Explorer searches results to confirm claims or facts. Pinpoint is an organizational and collaborative database that can convert documents, audio, media and images into texts in multiple formats and languages.
Certificates of completion were provided to participants at the end of the training.