News Library News Online
Vol. 21, No.3/Spring 1999

Table of Contents

Minneapolis: Welcomes the News Division on its 75th Anniversary
Aside Bar
Notes from the Chair
News Research at the Post
People
Rewarding a Job Well Done
Winter SLA Recap
Poynter: News Research in the  Newsroom
News Research with an Ethnic Touch
Technology Tips: ABC's Intranet
Public Reference

Web Extras:

Training Copy Editors
Election Winners

News Library News
SLA News Division Home

 

Technology Tips

By C.B. Hayden and Candace Stuart

In response to last Fall’s "Technology Tips" column (which focused on intranets in newspaper libraries), C.B. Hayden and Candace Stuart of ABC News describe how a broadcasting research team utilizes its intranet to respond to breaking news coverage. Their story follows:

At 9:00 a.m. on a March morning we hear from our National Assignment Desk that former Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun has died. Morning News needs updates and World News Tonight has to get an obit underway immediately. Our challenge is to deliver to every desktop within ABC News the research materials needed by those who will be covering this story. Our goal is to do this in 30 minutes or less.

Less than a year ago this would have been impossible. Now, the Research Center's intranet not only makes this possible but also makes rapid response to breaking news a service that our users depend on us to supply."

It was several months into the existence of our intranet before we came to understand how our role in covering breaking and ongoing news coverage had evolved. It had long been our intention to provide a stream of intranet pages devoted to research on major stories in the hopes that our staff  would find them worthwhile. We were unprepared, however, for how quickly our pages were accepted as a major reporting tool within ABC News or how quickly the availability of these pages came to be expected of us. It became clear that we had to think and act in the same way as our assignment desks.

Now our daily challenge is to decide what stories we cover, how to cover them and what research resources we should broadcast throughout the News Division via our intranet pages to keep ABC News on top of the stories.

During ABC News coverage of the air strikes against Iraq late in 1998, we realized how our intranet had fundamentally changed the way we supported coverage of an event.

Those of us who had worked through the 1991 Persian Gulf War in the Research Center remembered when "gearing up" meant expanding the military affairs area of our print collection, ordering multiple copies of key reference works to be located at satellite locations throughout the New York bureau and bracing ourselves for an onslaught of online searching. Back then we produced a library of briefing books that had to be copied, bound and distributed to correspondents stationed throughout the world. Filled with background information on nations, weapons, country leaders, analysis, etc., these had to be continuously updated as the war progressed. Logistically, the production and distribution of this material was a daunting task. Realistically, this meant the books were never quite up to date.

For the Iraqi crisis of 1998, we created an extensive intranet page with an array of resources that could be accessed from the desktops of correspondents at ABC News bureaus throughout the world. Instead of spending days, even weeks, preparing as we did in 1991, one staff member spent the better part of a day building a page that linked our users to the best relevant information the web and our collection had to offer. After careful review of available resources and a quick estimation of the anticipated research needs, we developed content areas arranged as subcategories on that intranet page. These areas included:

* Media Coverage - links to online coverage from major news organizations

* Military Hardware - detailed specifications and graphics for weapon systems

* The Country - basic information on Iraq and its leaders

* Government Briefings and Updates

* Historical and Political Background - analytical briefing materials

* Iraqi Opposition Movements

* Chronologies

* Maps and Potential Targets in Iraq

* Chemical and Biological Weapons

As with all our news coverage intranet pages, this page consists of a blend of three types of information: 1) links to external internet resources evaluated and selected by Research Center staff members; 2) material extracted from print and online sources edited by ResearchCenter staff members and compiled into Background Briefing reports; and, 3) access to an array of fee-based information services.

One Research staff person is usually assigned to create and manage a breaking news page. Other staff members contribute to the page as they uncover relevant material and resources. We notify users immediately by e-mail when we add breaking news pages. Our main intranet page also has a scrolling banner announcing new content which can be updated as often as necessary. We take great pride in often having a breaking-news page up for our users before the major internet portals begin offering a similar page to those who visit their web sites.

Once the page has been produced, the matter of expanding and updating it becomes almost routine. By using the intranet to supply most of the basic research needs of our users, we are free to devote much more time to the more challenging and in-depth information problems that always arise as big stories break and develop.

Major news events provide opportunities to expand our resources and better market our services. The ability to acquire access to costly new resources can be more easily justified when those resources can be projected via the intranet to all our users rather than only being available at the Research Center. With the threat of a major military action in 1998, approval for a site license for intranet access to the U.S. Naval Institute's Periscope database, for example, was a breeze.

We have also started building 'canned searches' into most of our breaking news pages. Using both the Dialog Intranet Toolkit and Proquest Sitebuilder we can store expertly formulated search strategies on our pages that with one mouse click retrieve relevant, highly-focused material. This keeps our content fresh and enables all our users to take full advantage of online databases. These searches are of particular importance during news crises when even the most accomplished end-users can better use their time on other reportorial duties.

The intranet is currently available at every computer in ABC's New York headquarters, all the domestic bureaus, the London bureau and via dial-in from remote locations. We have also recently acquired the technology needed to copy intranet content onto CD-ROMs for those who may be reporting from locations with no network or internet access.

In both 1991 and 1998 we were able to reach people who had not been Research Center users in the past and demonstrate to them how our services can have a direct, positive impact on their reporting. But now, the power of the intranet greatly magnifies that ability to reach users faster and serve their needs better than at any time in the past. With the intranet not only are we finding many new users but we are also finding that the expectations of all our users have been raised. One goal of the ABC Research Center's intranet is to prove to our users that a 'journalistic eye' and the ability to respond rapidly to news coverage situations is not just the province of correspondents and producers. For us, the intranet is the necessary tool to for achieving that goal.

The ABC News intranet has been a highly successful and dynamic undertaking. According to Hayden, "currently experiences almost 60,000 hits per month after less than a year of operation and the intranet probably changes in some way at least on an hourly basis."

C.B. Hayden is the Manager of the Research Center & Information Services, ABC News and Candace Stuart is the Supervisor Online Information Services/Intranet Coordinator, ABC News.


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