Reporting & Public Records Archives

Digital Security

Even if you are not working on a sensitive story, you are a target if your colleagues are working on a sensitive story. Developing a strong security posture is paramount in the news industry. It not only affects you, it will affect the people around you. Passwords vs Passphrases When it comes to passwords, length is better…

OSI Verification

Open Source Investigations Verification This tutorial is about performing forensic analysis on social media to verify its authenticity. Often this type of analysis is used in determining: Whether social media, like photographs or videos, really depict what they purport; Fact-checking breaking news events and their chronology based on open source information, such as social media…

Vehicle and Vessel Licenses and Registrations

Licenses for drivers and for motor vehicles and marine vessels are issued by states, usually through a Department of Motor Vehicles or Division of Motor Vehicles. You’ll need to check a state government website to find the DMV agency that handles the licensing to see what information is publicly available. A private directory called Department…

Coroner’s Office Reports

Counties have coroner’s offices that investigate the causes of death in a wide variety of circumstances that are violent, suspicious or unusual. These range from suspected homicides and suicides to fatal accidents or deaths where there is no attending physician. The coroner’s office, sometimes referred to as the medical examiner, prepares a report on each…

Lexis Nexis

LexisNexis is a huge electronic database of newspaper and magazine stories, transcripts of TV broadcasts and summaries of public records filings. This tutorial covers the part of the LexisNexis service for researching news stories (and some public records). There are three basic steps to using LexisNexis: Choosing an information source, such as a news publication…

Criminal Court Records

When a prosecutor formally charges a person with a crime a criminal court case is generated. In cases involving California law, a person is formally charged with a crime by a county district attorney in a county superior court. For federal cases, a U.S. Attorney’s Office will file charges in a U.S. district court. Criminal…

Civil Court Lawsuits

Lawsuits are filed in civil courts, and the documents filed in these civil cases are presumed to be open to the public. Civil court lawsuits include many different types of filings including divorce cases (often called “dissolution of marriage” or “family law” cases) and probate actions to settle a deceased person’s estate. There also are…

Property Tax Collector’s Office

Each county has a property tax collector’s office that collects property taxes (often referred to as “secured” property taxes) from property owners. The tax collector relies on the county assessor’s office to get the assessed value of each piece of property. The tax collector then applies to that value the property tax rate (which is…

Assessor’s Office

A county assessor’s office compiles information on the value of parcels of property in a county and the owners of the properties, for purposes of computing property tax payments. Individual pieces of property are identified by assessor’s parcel numbers and parcel maps. Parcel Maps A county assessor’s office keeps a set of maps to identify…

Business and Corporation Records

This is a guide to the public records a reporter can access to find background information on a business. The records are kept by a variety of local, state and federal agencies, as well as some private organizations. The filings vary from simple listings of the address and principal executive of a company, to detailed…