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CHAPTER 5 Gathering and Verifying Information
Overview
This chapter introduces the basic sources of information available to reporters, emphasizing
the use of online computer databases. No modern reporter can expect to be successful without
learning to use electronic sources of information. That begins with use of the electronic
library or morgue found at almost all newspapers and at many broadcast stations. Today,
most newspapers and broadcast stations also have access to various commercial databases,
which are invaluable in providing background for a story. It is essential that young reporters
learn to use them.
Teaching Tips
College students are often more Web savvy than their professors, but there are still some
things government databases, for example that are foreign to even the most committed
Internet users. Getting copies of databases in the hands or on the screens of students is the
easiest way to help them understand the importance of learning about the role such data are
Students also need to practice critically analyzing the reliability of websites, and the
exercises here give them a chance to work on that skill. You might ask them to keep their
own computer file of valuable research sites they encounter; occasionally, ask students to
share their discoveries.
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Lecture Notes
I. INTRODUCTION
A. The downing of Malaysian Airlines Flight 17 in Ukraine, and the Russian effort to
change the social media record.
B. Social media Twitter, Facebook, etc. can be useful, but risky, and continue to
evolve.
II. ACCURATE INFORMATION: THE BASIS OF A GOOD STORY
A. The discipline of multiple sources.
1. Good writing is dependent on good reporting.
2. Milwaukee Journal Sentinel stories about potentially harmful substances in
everyday products.
B. The discipline of verification.
III. ONLINE SOURCES OF INFORMATION
A. News archives: the place to start.
1. Full-text databases, using Boolean search commands.
2. Limitations: often no photos, broadcast stories are often text-
appear as they were originally published.
3. Better technology PDFs, podcasts, vodcasts is reducing the limitations.
B. Search engines Google, Yahoo, etc.
1. Key question: Is the information accurate?
2. Filtering (Google, Bing) vs. nonfiltering (DuckDuckGo).
a. Helpful for overview/background, but it s a good practice to verify with another
source.
C. News sites, social media and content aggregators good reporters use these sites to
find sources and for background.
D. Commercial database services Factiva, NewsBank, ProQuest Newsstand, etc. have
potential problems:
1. Must obey copyright laws.
2. Not all articles that appeared in a newspaper can be found in a database.
E. Government databases city, county, state, federal.
1. Investigative reporting using database matching, relational database programs.
F. Special-interest databases created by organizations.
1. Avoid using biased sources of information.
2. Do your own research; avoid tainted data sources.
G. Custom databases can be time-consuming but effective.
IV. TRADITIONAL SOURCES OF INFORMATION
A. The traditional newsroom library.
1.
2. Search for photos of news subjects.
B. Other traditional sources.
1. Among the top choices: city directories, telephone books, maps, state manuals,
, Congressional Directory, Congressional Record,
Current Biography, Dictionary of American Biography, Facts on File World News
Digest, Guinness Book of World Records, InfoPlease Almanac, National Trade and
2.
Class Activities and Discussion Questions
Activity 1:
feature a different topic and include three different stories on that topic. Put students in
groups of two or three, and assign each group to a station. Students should quickly skim each
story and together determine which of the three stories is most comprehensive and why, and
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repeated most often in the three different stories? What were the best examples of unique
sources that added to the authority of stories?
Activity 2: If you have access to a computer lab, have your students go online to a
government database. (
www.faa.gov.) Once they are there, have students explore some of the data available on the
site. (The FAA site, for example, includes accident and incident data, including preliminary
data, final data, accidents within the past 10 years, accidents more than 10 years ago,
Activity 3: Here are questions to ask, broken into six different categories, when you need to
evaluate sources of information (print or electronic) (the list is from the library of the
University of California, Berkeley: http://guides.lib.berkeley.edu/evaluating-resources):
1. Authority – Who is the author? What is their point of view?
2. Purpose – Why was the source created? Who is the intended audience?
3. Publication & format – Where was it published? In what medium?
evaluating online resources. If it s unclear who exactly created or published certain
works online, look for About pages on the site for more information, or search for
exact quotations from the text in Google (using quotation marks) to see if you can
find other places where the work has been published.
Ask students to use these questions (and the UC Berkeley website, if they are in a lab) to
evaluate several websites for reliability and accuracy. Give students a list of websites to
choose from, including some that are considered very reliable (for example, The New York
Activity 4: Ask students, working alone or in pairs in a computer lab, to use the Internet to
find the answers to the following questions. Students can use Wikipedia, but they should also
cite another source to confirm what they find on Wikipedia.
1. Who is the immediate past president of the university you attend?
2. What is the population of undergraduate and/or graduate students?
7. What is the size in square miles of Canada?
8. What is the name of a website that lists the names of all the Academy Award Best Picture
winners?
9.
10. What is the estimated annual value of the marijuana crop in California?
Discussion questions: How easy (or difficult) was it to find answers to these questions? What
non-Internet sources might you also use? Here are the answers:
Activity 5: Either in a computer lab, or with printouts of online information, ask students to
analyze the issue of the national debt from three different perspectives the Heritage
Foundation (www.heritage.org), the Center for American Progress
(www.americanprogress.org) and the U.S. Census Bureau (www.census.gov). Allow students
to read and take notes for 15 minutes before starting a class discussion. Discussion questions:
How do the three websites frame the issue? What biases do you sense? Is there identifiable
bias in the Census data? Why should reporters rely on government data rather than data
provided by interest groups? (The Heritage Foundation is politically conservative, and the
Center for American Progress is liberal. Typically, the Heritage Foundation and other
Solutions to Textbook Exercises
1. Students should always be focusing on how to improve stories theirs and others. This
assignment asks students to reflect on ways a local story could be improved by using
online sources ts to understand that their own stories can
benefit from the same kind of analysis.
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2. An obvious source of information for anyone familiar with databases would be the U.S.
Securities and Exchange Commission website (www.sec.gov), which contains vast
amounts of material on large, publicly traded companies such as Apple. Of course, many
3. Your journalism blog. Students should be able to compile quality sketches of their
representative. The incorporation of social media and crafting a tweet will be a simple but
important aspect of the assignment.
4. Navigating the Internet is merely a matter of finding a good place to start. For
information provided by U.S. government agencies, go to an excellent site maintained by
a.
b. CIA World Fact Book).
c. Awards by the U.S. Department of Education can be found at its website
(www.ed.gov).
d. The complete works of William Shakespeare appear at several sites on the Internet.
shakespeare.mit.edu.
e. As of this writing, there is no completely accurate centralized location for campaign
contribution information. One that is making a strong effort is www.opensecrets.org.
5. Google News clearly identifies, in the Google News home page, the sources for all of its
stories. Typically, they are from reputable news sites such as CNN, The New York Times,
Solutions to Workbook Exercises
1. Students can get the information they need for this exercise from lots of places, but the
website of Forbes magazine seems to have the most original research on pay for athletes.
2. Students will find many websites with demographic information, so a discussion about the
reliability of online information might be helpful here. Appropriate websites include the
3. The number of the nearest office of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services should be
listed in the local phone book or an online telephone directory. A phone call should yield
the mailing and email addresses. The same information can be found in the college or
4. Complete biographical data for these individuals can be found on LexisNexis or in
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a. Joe Panik, second baseman for the San Francisco Giants.
b. Merrick Garland, nominee to the U.S. Supreme Court (whose nomination is stuck in
the U.S. Senate as of this writing).
c. Jeff Flake, Republican senator from Arizona.
d. Katie Couric, former TV network news anchor who is now a global news anchor for
Yahoo.
5. a. The final popular vote in the 2008 presidential election was Barack Obama,
6. U.S. senators (effective 2016):
a. Florida: Marco Rubio (R) and Bill Nelson (D)
b. Colorado: Corey Gardner (R) and Michael Bennet (D)
7. Largest cities:
a. Vermont: Burlington
b. Connecticut: Bridgeport
c. Alabama: Birmingham
d. Montana: Billings
8. The last five prime ministers of Great Britain (as of 2010):
a. Theresa May, 2016 present
b. David Cameron, 2010 2016
9. Primary cash crops:
a. India: rice
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10. There should be ample sources of information about when your city was incorporated.
Students can check with city hall or the local library or the local chamber of commerce.
11. a. Telephone book and city directory.
b. The county recorder of deeds.
c. The tax assessor.
12. This information is filed with the federal government on various Form 990 and 10K
reports. It is available from many online services, including the site of the U.S. Securities
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14. This exercise is a good one for teaching students that there are many ways to write a
story. Critical examination of the approaches taken by two reporters is an excellent way to
15. The best choice for students might be a Google search on newsprint prices. If they have
access, students can also expect good results from LexisNexis, which has an exhaustive
16. Several trade magazines are published for the restaurant industry. These would be good
17. The hardware industry is a difficult one to tackle. Few people are willing to talk about
profits in that sector. However, it should be possible to check with your city finance office
18. Critics of Google, Bing, Yahoo and other filtered search engines argue that the revenue
requirements of the search engine take priority over the relevance of the search. It s
important that students understand that nothing is free Google and other search
Other sources that might have been used include the federal Occupational Safety and
Health Administration, the Department of Agriculture and nearby college or university
safety experts.
b. Obvious sources of information:
Springfield Red Cross
George Glenn, city fire marshal
c. Obvious sources of information:
Diane Lusbey, city manager
Nicole Ziden, Lincoln County commissioner
Andrew Kramer, Lincoln County commissioner
20. Information about Sandra Bullock is easily obtained from , from the
LexisNexis database of famous people and from IMDb.com. Any commercial database
also would contain stories about her, including profiles. Students could try a Web search,
too.
CHALLENGE EXERCISE
21.
commercial database or a simple Google search should provide plenty of information on
the subject. This exercise could be done with almost any famous sports or media figure.