Via Lifehacker. One of the tedious parts of being a journalist is finding ways to track down the people you want to talk to. Lifehacker puts together a nice little 101 on how to find folks beyond merely googling them.
If you don’t feel like visiting the link, here are the highlights:
- To find a person’s home address and phone number: Try Zabasearch. This is a search tool that can be done on a state-by-state basis, e.g. John Smith, Anytown, Mass. It also pulls up birth date information, although sometimes it’s conflicting. I use this tool often to track down the home addresses and phone numbers of businessmen and businesswomen I write about — particularly when their PR flacks and secretaries give me the runaround.
- To find background on a person: Try Pipl. This is a tool I haven’t tried much yet. You need the name and city address for a person you are looking for to make it work best.
- To find out what a person says about himself on social networking sites: Try Wink. Once you know the name and address of the person you’re tracking down, see if he is a member of any social networking sites like Facebook, LinkedIn. A lot has been written about the info on these sites damaging people’s job prospects. But in researching the backgrounds of alleged criminals, it can be a gold mine. I know a certain reporter who found this type of tool very useful when breaking a story about a high school teacher who had sex with a teenage student: Sure enough, the teacher had a racy MySpace page, which was taken down the day after the story came out.
- If you’re a Firefox user: try the “Who is this person?” extension. This feature will allow you to instantly run a name through Google, Zabasearch and a few other sites. Could be useful, but I prefer doing these by hand.
Posted by kstonge 
Posted by kstonge 
