Updated: June 4, 2000

U.S. State Fact Sheets
http://www.econ.ag.gov/epubs/other/usfact/
Compiled from data coming from various government agencies, the fact sheets contain information on population, top export commodities, farm characteristics and much more.

USDA Economics and Statistics System
http://usda.mannlib.cornell.edu/usda/usda.html
Search or browse through over 300 databases.

Economic Census
http://www.census.gov/epcd/www/econ97.html
Access the 1997 Economic Census online. Link to the 1992 data also available. Access information for your state by industry.

Crime Statistics Site by Regina Schekall
http://www.crime.org
Meta-site for crime data. Collection of links to state and regional numbers as well as historical crime numbers.

Sourcebook for Criminal Justice Statistics
http://www.albany.edu/sourcebook
Sourcebook of over 600 tables from more than 100 sources. This book is published by the Bureau of Justice Statistics. Files are found in Adobe Acrobat format. You can browse topics or search by keywords.

FBI Uniform Crime Reports
http://www.fbi.gov/ucr.htm
Find data on crime that is reported. Contact your state or local officials to see about getting more detailed numbers for your area.

Census Bureau
http://www.census.gov
Looking for demographic information? This is the place to go. This is an incredibly comprehensive site and you should spend some time exploring all of the information that you can collect here. Population estimates can be found at: http://www.census.gov/ftp/pub/population/www/estimates/popest.html Also, don’t forget to check your State Data Center. They may have data that is more up-to-date for your state.

1990 Census Lookup
http://venus.census.gov/cdrom/lookup
Great place to extract numbers from the 1990 Census data. You can gather data down to the tract level and download into a delimited file. Access through the "Data Access Tools" link on the Census homepage.

Current Population Survey
http://www.bls.census.gov/cps
Joint project of the Census Bureau and the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Find all sorts of data on things like school enrollment, voting & registration, work schedules, computer ownership and more. The CPS is a monthly labor force survey conducted with approximately 48,000 households from around the country.

Administration on Aging
http://www.aoa.dhhs.gov/aoa/stats/statlink.html
Quick and easy access to information on the aging population. Some data even available in spreadsheet format.

General Social Survey, 1972-1996
http://gort.ucsd.edu/gss/
Download data in ascii format or in spreadsheet format. The data is compiled by the National Opinion Research Center and provides a view into societal trends.

Center for Education Statistics
http://nces.ed.gov/
Check out the Encyclopedia of Education Statistics linked off the first page. This section includes the Condition of Education text from 1996 to 1999 as well as Projections of Education Statistics to 2008.

Emergency Release Notification System
http://www.epa.gov/ERNS/docs/data.html
Download the data on unexpected hazardous spills. Great to know this is here if there’s an accident in your area. The data can be downloaded by EPA region and documentation is available. Note: The EPA is having some difficulty with this site last I checked.

Fish & Wildlife Endangered Species
http://endangered.fws.gov/listdata.html
Easy to download and well-documented site for finding information on endangered animals and plants.

HazDat Database
http://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/hazdat.html
Scientific and administrative database developed to provide access to information on the release of hazardous substances from Superfund sites or from emergency events and on the effects of hazardous substances on the health of human populations.

Budget of the United States Government
http://w3.access.gpo.gov/usbudget/index.html
Download data in .txt or .pdf format from the U.S. budget. Data includes the 2001 budget and dates back to 1996. You can access historical information as well. In some cases data dates back to the 1920s.

FECInfo
http://www.tray.com/fecinfo/
Download data on campaign contributions.

American University Campaign Finance Website
http://www1.soc.american.edu/campfin/
This site is directed towards journalists who are looking for campaign contribution data. Data warehouse online where you can download several interesting tables involving candidates from the Presidential, House and Senate races.

Campaign Finance Information Center
http://www.campaignfinance.org
Find story ideas and data on campaign finance. You can analyze some data at this site as well as order data from the IRE data warehouse.

World Health Organization Statistical Information System
http://www.who.org/whosis
You can search this site or browse through the available topics on things like AIDS/HIV, Basic Health Indicators, Aging and Population Estimates.

National Center for Health Statistics
http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/
Access statistics from CDC and the National Center for Health Statistics. Links to tabulated state data and the "Top 10 Downloads" right off the front page.

Department of Health & Human Services Office of Inspector General
http://www.dhhs.gov/progorg/oig/cumsan/main.htm
List of all of the doctors and organizations excluded from doing business with the government. This could be a great spot to find some story ideas. This is a self-extracting file that you can pull into a database or a spreadsheet.

FedStats
http://www.fedstats.gov
Excellent one-stop-shopping for data. Access data through an alphabetical listing, through a topical listing (found under the Projects link) or through Data Access Tools. Index to statistical sources coming from 70 Federal agencies. Browsing through the Projects area can provide great ideas for stories! Check this out!

Statistical Abstract of the United States
http://www.census.gov/prod/www/statistical-abstract-us.html
Download data in PDF format from the Statistical Abstract. Data covers 1995-1999 Abstracts. Great if you’re using the hard copy and you want one of the tables you’re looking at to be in electronic format. The version on the web identifies corresponding page numbers.

Statistical Sources on the Web
http://www.lib.umich.edu/libhome/Documents.center/stats.html
Great collection put together by the library at the University of Michigan. Runs the gamut – from agriculture to the environment, from science to the weather.

Social Statistics Briefing Room
http://www.whitehouse.gov/fsbr/ssbr.html
This is a collection of crime, demographic, education and health statistics put out by the White House. Great because they pull out some of the most useful data sets. Often times you get a chart rather than the raw numbers but if you click on the chart you should be able to view the numbers below.

Finding Data on the Internet
http://www.robertniles.com/data/
Great meta-site for finding data on a variety of topics.

A Journalist’s Database of Databases
http://www.reporter.org/~drew/database.html
Check out Drew Sullivan’s meta-site for downloadable data. He breaks the data out by ASCII/Text files or HTML or just full downloadable databases. Scan this page – there is some really cool information here!

Librarians’ Index to the Internet
http://lii.org
Search for "statistics" by subject and get a good listing of statistical sites on the web.

There are several online databases that you should also check for numbers. Sometimes you can download data sets from these databases. Other times you can just search for information. Check your state government agencies’ sites too. Many have databases online.

Toxic Release Inventory System
http://www.epa.gov/enviro/html/tris/tris_overview.html
Search for companies from your area here.

OSHA Searchable Databases
http://www.osha.gov/oshstats/
Search inspections and accident reports by industry and name. Data goes back to 1972 in some cases.

FAA Safety Databases
http://nasdac.faa.gov/asy_internet/safety_data/
Check out the accident/incident database at this site.

NTSB Aviation Accidents
http://www.ntsb.gov/NTSB/Query.htm
Search by city, aircraft and airline.

National Center for Education Statistics Electronic Catalog
http://nces.ed.gov/pubsearch/onlinedata.asp
Lots of data here but sometimes difficult to use. Valuable for education reporters to learn how to navigate.

Develop a list of web sites for your newsroom that focuses on data that is available at the state and local levels. More and more state government agencies are making statistical information readily available for downloading. Build a web page for your newsroom that highlights some of this great information! Make it easy for you and your co-workers to use numbers to add context and depth to the daily reporting.

Using statistics in a story can be tricky – especially for those who are not trained in the proper use of statistics – those of us who don’t often toss words like "standard deviation," "median," and "mode" around in our daily conversation. I found the following books and web sites to provide helpful guidance along the way:

Finding Statistics Online, Paula Berinstein

A Mathematician Reads the Newspaper, John Allen Paulos

The Visual Display of Quantitative Information, Edward R. Tufte

Statistics Every Writer Should Know, Robert Niles - http://www.robertniles.com/data/

Statistical Abstract of the United States - http://www.census.gov/prod/www/statistical-abstract-us.html – Scroll down to the bottom of the page and check out the Appendices. There is a lot of good information in the "Guide to Sources of Statistics" as well as the "Metropolitan Area Concepts and Components."

IRE Resource Center Tip Sheet Database – http://www.ire.org/resourcecenter/initial-search-tipsheets.html

Search the database for "data" or "statistics" and you’ll pull up all sorts of great tip sheets on using numbers in stories. Great to review the warnings of dirty data in particular. Remember that all numbers should be examined for reliability! You can access the story database from this screen too. (You’ll have to login as Guest;Guest to view the tip sheets if you’re not an IRE member.)

Last Updated: 03/21/03
Jessica Baumgart
newsdivisionweb@yahoo.com