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

 

News Research in the Newsroom: A Few Words on Poynter

By Nisa Asokan

In early December 1998, Nora Paul, Director of News Research Programs, and Paul Pohlman, Director of Leadership Programs, lead the News Research in the Newsroom seminar at the Poynter Institute. This workshop allowed five teams of co-workers to spend a week bouncing ideas off one another and exchanging CAR war stories. The teams consisted of a reporter, a news researcher, and an editor from five papers: The Atlanta Journal Constitution, The Palm Beach Post, the News-Press (Fort Myers, FL), The Plain Dealer and the Washington Post. The group spent time examining various roles in the newsroom, exploring new trends in news research and developing a plan of action for advancing the use of CAR in the newsroom. At the end of the weeklong seminar, all five newspaper teams left exhausted, but enlightened with similar goals in mind.

All five teams’ "plans of action" included a commitment to improve

communication between news research and the newsroom. One of the biggest obstacles to this goal is newsroom culture and attitudes. What news librarians, reporters and editors do and what is expected of them is ingrained in the culture of the newspaper. Guest presenter Tom Boyer, Research Editor at the Seattle Times, illustrated the evolution of the Seattle Times news library from the 1920s and 30s with a series of old photographs. The stoic images illustrated quite clearly that the news library is a durable institution. Not much had changed in over half of a century, as is likely the case in many news libraries. Today, the Seattle Times library is decentralizing and has researchers assigned as liaisons to specific desks. Reporters are now empowered with web access, Nexis and Dow Jones on their desktops.

One of the solutions we discussed to improve communication is to get the librarians more involved in the newsroom. In most news libraries today, the library is separate from the newsroom. Christine Stapleton, a reporter with the Palm Beach Post, expressed her frustration with her current relationship with news librarians, "librarians are like dogs. I throw them a bone and they fetch…. I don’t even know some of their names." According to Boyer, the library and newsroom will never be fully integrated until researchers are sitting out in the newsroom. The San Antonio Express-News News Research Center is an example of a decentralized news library. At the Express-News, there is no one "place" for the library. Guest presenter Kathy Foley, Editor, Information Services, talked about having researchers sitting in the newsroom. By being in the newsroom, the researcher can be in on impromptu training, story writing, or CAR projects from the beginning and take a more proactive role in the newsroom. Foley also said that the book collection at the paper is not in one central location. Rather, various books are located near the appropriate news desks.

As the library decentralizes, the Intranet emerges as the primary communication tool in the newsroom. Foley showed us some pages from Ensite, the San Antonio Express-News’ company-wide intranet. The

innovative design inspired a discussion on the content of intranets. Some of the librarians decided, in their plans of action, to include on their intranets more newsroom type information, such as employee telephone numbers, staff mug shots, and local bios. Foley suggested that each desk in the newsroom should be encouraged to design their own page.

All teams agreed that training was an integral part of their plans. Jennifer LaFleur, Database Editor at the San Jose Mercury News, conducted a high-tech "how to" on training that involved an Etch-a-Sketch. Michelle Quigley, Researcher at the Palm Beach Post, had about five minutes to come up with a training plan to show us how to use this fine piece of equipment. Formal training is ideal, but informal training is just as effective and a sense of humor is essential. LaFleur suggested to the news librarians, instead of answering

every reference request, tell reporters how to find the information on their own, especially if the information is on the internet or accessible from reporters’ desktop. News researchers have the opportunity to train on a daily basis with almost every request

they get.

There is a lot news librarians can do to promote CAR, even though it may not seem within their powers. Librarians can start a CAR newsletter or include CAR stories in their in-house publications. Librarians can host "techno coffees" where a small group of reporters get together to talk about their experiences with CAR. Librarians can also play a big part in CAR training by looking out for new tools. They can show reporters, editors, and management what other papers are doing with CAR. They can suggest story ideas using CAR, contribute to "CAR paragraphs" within stories, or start a project with a reporter and work on it as a collaborative effort.

 

Nisa Asokan is a reference librarian at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Her email is nasokan@ajc.com.

 


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