Okay, so let’s put you on the spot for a second. You’re a news editor. You’re keeping tabs on your organization’s website. It’s the fall of 2012. Hurricane Sandy is demolishing the East Coast.
You see this photo pop up on Twitter:
And after you pick your jaw up off the floor, you have to ask yourself a really big question: Is that real?
The easy way to track down the original source of an image is via Tineye.com. It’s a reverse image search. Just grab the URL for the image (or even just the URL for the page) and pop in into Tineye, and it’ll tell you where else this image lives on the web.
In a breaking news situation, this can help you verify an image, and keep you from posting some embarrassing fake photos on your site.
It’s also useful in investigative stories. For those who remember the Manti Teo scandal at Notre Dame from the fall — briefly, a Notre Dame linebacker’s girlfriend turned out to be fake — consider this: Reporters at Deadspin.com used Tineye in their reporting search. Teo’s “girlfriend” had a Twitter account, and Deadspin used Tineye to track down the original source of — and the woman from — those photos.
If you’re trying to track down the original source of images you find on Reddit, try karmadecay.com, which is a reverse-image search specifically for that site.
What Else Can I Help With?
So many new people have joined this list in the last few weeks that I wanted to put this question out to everyone: What are you working on right now that you need help with? What tools could help you tell better stories in 2013?
Just hit reply to this email and let me know, and I’ll share the best tools with the entire list!
Also: If you’ve missed an edition of the newsletter, you can always click here and go back through the archives.
Now get out there and tell some great stories today!