Some First Steps in Teaching a Strategy for Fact Finding

Abstract

Paper form can match electronic for simple quests With a minimum of class time, reporting students can learn to find answers to questions like these: What is the most popular color for sports cars? What do U.S. public school teachers perceive as the most serious problem in their schools? Of which companies is Jay Pritzker either a board member or officer? How many people play soccer and how does it rank in sports popularity? What is the current status of the Ethics in Government Reform Act? To whom does the director of the FBI report? None of the answers need be found through the wizardry of electronic technology. All six are found in basic print references-ones that take no more expertise than the ability to turn a page and no more memorization of format than ability to alphabetize. According to a survey taken of newspaper business editors, paper references are still the norm on smaller newspapers, where most journalism graduates will get their first jobs. The survey also provided evidence that many reporters on such newspapers make little use of any but the most basic reference works, yet who go beyond the minimum are sold on the results-as are reporters on larger newspapers. The literature in the field suggests a trend toward an all-or-nothing approach to the question of reporters as researchers. There are now a number of textbooks devoted to fact gathering (for example, Search Strategies in Mass Communication, The Reporter's Handbook, Investigative Reporting: Advanced Methods and Techniques), a great growth in the number of courses aimed at teaching computer-assisted reporting, and occasional reports of ambitious newsroom programs to educate reporters on computer-research skills (for example, a June 24, 1994, article in Editor Fr Publisher titled Five-Step Plan for Raising Reporters' Computer Literacy). The difficulties of setting up a course on computer-assisted reporting are well documented in the Autumn 1995 edition of Journalism & Mass Communication Educator (Problems of Introducing Courses in Computer-Assisted Reporting). All of this can be rather daunting, perhaps explaining why some have begun to argue that information gathering has become so complex that it is well to leave it to the specialists (as in a June 1993 Quill article, Need Leaders for News Technology? Look to Librarians and a Sept./Oct. edition of Online, in which the librarian writer extols the division of labor between reporters and researchers-a division that creates those moments of intense partnership when you're each doing what you know how to do best.). We suggest there may be a happy medium. Although the news-editorial department at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln is offering instruction in database manipulation in second-year reporting and will offer a course next fall devoted exclusively to fact gathering, we also have incorporated more fact gathering in beginning reporting classes-in bite-size pieces that don't require a redo of the course. The aim is to bridge the gap lying between the telephone-book/city directory format and the world of database searches. If students have knowledge of a small but well-chosen set of reference sourcesprincipally paper ones-they will find good use for their knowledge when they get their first jobs. The bite-size beginning also can be the base for building more fact finding into the second-year course. This article will outline what we have begun to offer in a beginning reporting class and what we perceive its future value will be. Together, we (a journalism professor and liaison librarian with a journalism specialty) talked over time limits, format and goals. We settled on three, one-hour library visits, to consist of 20 minutes of instruction and 40 minutes of practice. An overall test, containing questions much like that opened this article, also is given. …