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Vol. 22, No.1/Fall 1999

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A Summer Interning at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution

By Kelly Quinn

Before beginning my summer internship, news libraries were a mystery to me. Don’t get me wrong, I had done my homework. I had read numerous articles on news librarianship, followed the NewsLib listserv and even visited a few libraries. But I still could only imagine the day-to-day workings of a metro newspaper library. I was full of questions, and my 10-week internship with the

Atlanta Journal-Constitution was my chance to find the answers.

The AJC internship program, which included 13 interns this summer, offered students several learning opportunities. Like many newspapers, AJC offers internships for students who wish to be reporters or copy editors. But other options are available too, such as my internship in News Research. After several days of training, the interns went to work in their different areas, meeting every Tuesday for lunch and discussion.

Each intern was assigned a mentor. My mentor was Alice Wertheim, an experienced librarian who helped me manage the intricacies of AJC's reference collection. I also commandeered Nisa Asokan to serve as surrogate mentor in Alice's absence. I relied heavily upon them both for their advice and guidance. In fact, everyone in News Research was very helpful, which made it a comfortable learning environment.

As for my experiences in News Research, I really could not have asked for a more news-filled summer. Two events stand out as memorable: the Cyrano Marks and Mark Barton shootings. Morbid, I know, but these stories were interesting to me because of the considerable amount of research the department contributed. I did not include the story of JFK Jr.'s death because I wasn't there when the story broke. By the time I came in, Ginny Everett's top-notch team of researchers had all the needed facts neatly compiled in manila folders. But during the other stories, I was in the middle of the action.

The details of the Cyrano Marks story came in slowly. On July 12, Marks woke up his girlfriend, her five children and her sister. After gathering them in a bedroom, he told them he would kill them all. And he did, save one. The girlfriend's 11-year-old son was forced to watch the killings. The boy was wounded, but he survived. With a death toll of seven, the reporters wanted to know if it ranked as the largest mass murder in Atlanta history. Nisa, working with other AJC staff, had established a homicide database from public records. We searched this database to compile a list of multiple-victim homicides. We also gathered information on the homicide rate for that neighborhood. From this data, we determined it was the worst killing spree in Atlanta this century. At least, it was until July 29.

The Mark Barton shootings happened on July 29. After killing his wife and two children a few days earlier, Barton entered a Buckhead office building and then walked into another building across the street. In his wake, he left nine dead and a dozen injured. The first 911 call was made just before 3 p.m. The call to News Research came in shortly after that.

Guess who took the call. Me. It seemed so unreal. I could barely get out the words: there's somebody shooting people in Buckhead. We turned up the volume on the TV and the whole department stood transfixed by the news report. But only for an instant. Then everyone snapped into action.

We gathered information on the office buildings, where they were located, and what businesses were there. Then another call came in. I picked this one up too. The editor had the name of the shooter. It wasn't enough information to locate an AutoTrack record, so I ran the name through our archives and got a hit. It was a story about a Mark Orrin Barton who was suspected of killing his wife in Alabama. I doubted that it was the same man, but just in case, I printed out the story and set it aside. Another call came in. Alice got that one. They had the middle initial: O. Alice's AutoTrack search confirmed our suspicions. It was the same man! Making that discovery and working on the Barton story were the high points of my internship.

As I look back, I feel fortunate to have had this rich learning experience, which I euphemistically called "reference bootcamp." I received training in Lexis-Nexis, Dow Jones and AutoTrack. I learned about the different elements of the library, from cataloging to archiving to reference. When I began my internship, my goal was to see how a metro news library worked. I accomplished that goal, but I gained more than just a better understanding of news librarianship. I gained skills that will make me a better librarian.

Kelly Quinn is a student at SUNY Buffalo. Her email is kaquinn@acsu.buffalo.edu.


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