Problem 1) For the county that you chose last week, see if you can find 2 local newspapers either based in the county or that cover the county in terms of their writing. There are many ways to find this information out, but I would suggest using Google. First of all, you could Google "Newspapers AND [name of your county]." Alternatively, you could google newspapers a major city in the county you chose (for example, for Will County, IL, you could see if there were any newspapers based in Joliet. For Lake County, IN, you could see if there were newspapers based in Gary). The key to this assignment is getting to know your county a little bit beyond the incarceration data from last week. If you're not familiar with your county, you could look it up on Google Maps to get a sense of where it is and what cities are in it, etc.
Problem 2) List 2-3 news sources where you could find local news from the county you chose. List them in your discussion post. Are any of them online. Are any of the newspapers also in print? How often do they publish? Daily? Weekly?
Problem 3) Briefly evaluate one of the newsources for us in terms of what you could learn about some of the questions you had about policing and incarceration trends for your county. What sorts of things would you look for in the newspaper to explore more about the trends that you saw last week.
Problem 4) Finally, if you can, find an article from the newspaper that you think would be helpful to better understanding the incarceration data from last week. It could have something to do with crime trends, it could be an article about how the county is trying to build a bigger jail, if it's Illinois, it could be an article about how local officials are responding to the bail reform legislation that is soon-to-be enacted. There are no really wrong answers for this last part, I just want you to start to look through local news sources to try and add context and understanding to the numerical data from last week.
Problem 5) Comment on two of your classmates' posts. Hopefully this will be interesting, since we have all chosen different counties.