COMM 2100 - News Writing - Communication - Research Guides at Saint Louis University Libraries

This course page was created for COMM 2100: Welcome to New Writing with Dr. Ashley Walter. This page includes many of the resources we discussed in class, but if you're a Communications Major be sure to explore the rest of the guide! Contact your Communications Librarian (Sarah Reando) or the Government Information Librarian (Rebecca Hyde) with any question or to make an appointment for an in depth research consultation. For quick and/or general questions you can also use our 24/5 chat assistance to get help with your research!

General Sources

ProQuest Statistical Abstract of the United States This link opens in a new window
2013-present. The Statistical Abstract of the U.S. includes brief statistics on almost every topic. The focus is on the U.S. but some international statistics are included. This is a great source to start with to find which agency or organization has collected more in-depth statistics.

CRS Reports
The Congressional Research Service is a nonpartisan agency that produces research reports and briefs on major policy issues and any topic requested by a member of Congress. This official site is publicly available and includes recent reports. SLU database ProQuest Congressional includes historical reports going back to 1914.
Search USA.gov
Search USA.gov searches .gov, .mil, .us and selected other domains that include official local, regional, state and federal government agencies. Can be useful for finding statistics, government reports, and more.
Internet Archive's Wayback Machine
The Internet Archive has been crawling and preserving websites since the late 1990s. Us to see previous versions of current websites, or if you have old website links, see what they looked like when they were live on the web.

Demographics

Data.Census.Gov - Profiles
Search for any U.S. state, county, or city to get a profile of the community including demographics and socioeconomic make-up of the population, information on the local economy, housing, and more.

Social Explorer This link opens in a new window
1790-present. The tool provides easy mapping and report creation functions for U.S. Census data on population and housing, as well as statistics on religion, crime and health; and statistics from Canada, the United Kingdom, and Europe.
PolicyMap This link opens in a new window
PolicyMap is a multi-disciplinary interactive online mapping and visualization tool that provides access to data, including, demographic, spending, housing, quality of life, economy, health.

Crime Statistics

Local police departments report data on crime to the FBI to be collated into national level crime data. The FBI Uniform Crime Reports started in 1930 to collect crime statistics using uniform definitions across the whole country. In addition to this data which is usually available down to the city or police department level, you can often find statistics from local departments at a neighborhood or precinct level. Use usa.gov to search for local statistics.

FBI's Crime Data Explorer
Includes national and state level crime data back to 1985. Police Department level data is available for the last few years in most cases.
Uniform Crime Reports for the US, 1930 - 1998
Digitized volumes of the Historical Uniform Crime Reports are available through Hathi Trust, 1930-1998.
Crime in the U.S. 1995 - 2019
Much of this data is included in the Crime Data Explorer, but the FBI also archives the tables on their site.
St. Louis Crime Data by Neighborhood
Local crime data. Not every police department will make these available, but it worth looking for as it will often include more granular data than what is available from the FBI.

Campaign Contributions

Most states have campaign finance disclosure searches like the one for Missouri linked below. Use usa.gov to search for such pages, and read an overview of campaign finance laws by state from National Council for State Legislatures (NCSL).

Missouri Ethics Commission
Missouri Ethics Commission collects information about campaign finance donations and spending. Scroll down to the "searches" section to find disclosures for candidates & committee spending, donations, and more.
Federal Election Commission - How to Research Public Records
The Federal Election Commission (FEC) requires reporting, and makes information available related to campaign finance and contribution information for federal elections. This page links to guides for how to search their records.
Open Secrets
Non-profit, non-partisan organization that gathers and makes available elections & fundraising data, to track the influence of money in politics. Mostly national level information.

Getting Help After Graduation

Wherever you end up or whatever locality you're writing a story about, there is likely a public library nearby. Public libraries are often the best sources for asking questions and getting information about local government and records. For larges systems (like in St. Louis) the main library/headquarter library will be the place to go to or reach out to. Remember there's usually options for email, chat, or calling, you don't have to go in person!

Most areas of the country also have a Federal Depository Library where there will be an expert in (at least) federal government information who you can ask for help navigating government websites and sources. Although they don't always specialize in local government information, they likely know where to refer you for more help!