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

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News Research: Moving into the Newsroom

By Margot Williams

The clock is ticking towards the Year 2000. Do you know where your job is?

Technology is breeding change in our newsrooms. And whether the changes are inspired by the Y2K bug, millenium fever, zoning, or a new pagination system, newsroom-wide computer networks and Internet connections challenge news librarians to examine the way we work, and even what we do.

Sometimes it’s an outright dare.

"Now that we have Nexis and the Internet," a reporter asks, "what’s the library going to do?"

"With networked computers and e-mail," a newsroom manager suggests while enviously surveying the space filled by bookshelves and files, "it doesn’t matter where you’re located. You could be sitting at a computer anywhere."

She’s not proposing a move to the Paris bureau or a comfortable corner of your dining room. But there’s some space in the sub-basement . . . .

Of course you’re prepared with answers to these challenges. News libraries throughout the industry are in the process of reorganizing, repurposing and reconfiguring tasks, missions and even their positions within the corporate structure.

Some are successfully marketing the library’s knowledge and information products beyond the newsroom thoughout the corporation and to customers outside. Others are renewing the focus on our traditional newsroom support mission, with a twist.

We’re moving in.

News researchers are setting up outposts on the desks in the newsroom and creating a variety of new roles and relationships with the reporters, editors and other staff members. The technology that allows reporters to do some of their own research online or on an intranet doesn’t threaten our livelihoods. It sets us free from the reference desk assembly line to do other tasks, different work – BETTER STUFF!

My own testimonial: I moved out to the Metro section at The Washington Post four years ago, after 15 years of reference work in morgues, libraries and news research centers where I gained expertise in searching commercial databases and learning to drive a desktop computer.

A seat on the city desk brought me face to face with the newsroom’s evolving needs – help and training for new computer hardware and software skills, guidance for reporters’ use of the Internet and other online sources, scouting out new resources in public records and databases, finding people on deadline for breaking news, attending meetings, organizing and analyzing data from campaign finance filings and court dockets, developing shared reference files on the network and now on the intranet, preparing presentations for meetings and conferences.

That’s just in Metro.

At The Washington Post, there are outposts on the Financial, Foreign, Investigative, Metro and National desks and out in the Metro bureaus for researcher-player-coaches who specialize in the subjects and skills required by those sections. We meet every day to exchange information and try to prepare a research budget. And there’s also a staff in the News Research Center who answer research requests from the remaining desks and those requests the desk researchers can’t get to. All the researchers are linked by a networked request database so we can see who’s working on what.

In order to act effectively as desk researchers, upgrades for both our computers and our skills are necessary and continuing. Most challenging are the spreadsheet and relational database skills that working with original data requires. Out on the front lines, desk researchers are, increasingly, the link between the reporters and editors and the computer tools they need for their stories. Most of the time, we’re just one step ahead and struggling to keep up.

Another challenge is being asked to contribute in writing to stories and sidebars. How do they do it so well every day? I’ve gone through some anxious nights agonizing over the correctness of some facts or data now attributed directly to me. The up side, of course, is the credit line – or even a byline - and being part of the team that got the story.

Margot Williams is now the Research Editor in the Washington Post newsroom. Margot and investigative desk researcher Alice Crites were part of the team that produced the series "Deadly Force" about shootings by DC police, which recently won the Selden Ring prize.


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