Honing our Web search skills. (Convention Panels).Phineas Fiske, our beloved listserv master and the assistant editor of the editorial page of Newsday, ever so briefly took us back to the bad old days of editorial writing during his workshop, "How to be an instant expert." It wasn't long ago, he told the group, that an editorial writer coming across an important story would grab for a phone to uncover the needed information to write that most defining editorial. Having not the faintest idea of the subject matter, the brave writer would work the phones to find a person who knew a person who might have the information. Then, just shy of deadline, the writer would find his man or woman and then turn to that very frightening blank space Noun 1. blank space - a blank area; "write your name in the space provided" space, place surface area, expanse, area - the extent of a 2-dimensional surface enclosed within a boundary; "the area of a rectangle"; "it was about 500 square feet in area" . Times are better. Now, if you have Fiske's patience and computer skills, you can get the same information in your hands in 15 minutes. Using the right search engines, learning your way around the Web, and understanding what is garbage and what is useful can lead to the most delicious caches of information on subjects that earlier in the day seemed about as inviting as the name of one of his favorite search engines, Dogpile. Joining Fiske to run the workshop was Lawrence Messina, an Associated Press Associated Press: see news agency. Associated Press (AP) Cooperative news agency, the oldest and largest in the U.S. and long the largest in the world. reporter at the Charleston, West Virginia Not to be confused with Charles Town, West Virginia. Charleston is the capital of the U.S. state of West Virginia. It is located at the confluence of the Elk and Kanawha Rivers in Kanawha County. As of the 2000 census, it has a population of 53,421. , bureau. He walked the group through a real-life example of how a Web search not only helped him meet deadline but ultimately produced a major story. It concerned a government takeover of a small bank in the state. Messina was caught totally off guard when collared by an editor and assigned the story. He knew nothing about business reporting and even less about the intricacies of the federal Office of the Comptroller of the Currency The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (or OCC) was established by the National Currency Act of 1863 and serves to charter, regulate, and supervise all national banks and the federal branches and agencies of foreign banks in the United States. or the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), an independent U.S. federal executive agency designed to promote public confidence in banks and to provide insurance coverage for bank deposits up to $100,000. . In quick Web searches he was able to determine that the bank had a long history of regulatory problems yet had shown major profits in recent years. He also found that the authorities on the Isle of Man Noun 1. Isle of Man - one of the British Isles in the Irish Sea Man British Isles - Great Britain and Ireland and adjacent islands in the north Atlantic , of all places, had issued warnings to its citizens not to do business with the bank. Funny that, Messina thought. People on the far side of the world knew about the bank, but no one in West Virginia seemed to have heard about its problems. After Messina wrote his story and the FDIC FDIC See: Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation FDIC See Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC). and the comptroller's office completed its work, it was announced that the bank was one of the 10 worst bank failures in the nation, resulting in huge taxpayer losses and several indictments. Officials now estimate that the failure will drain more than $800 million in taxpayers' funded reserves. As Messina and Fiske showed, the Web is full of all sorts of goodies that can not only help a reporter or editorial writer through a very bad day but also allow that story or that editorial to make a big difference. RELATED ARTICLE: Phineas Fiske's tips STEP 1: TRACK DOWN THE ORIGINAL STORY: AP: http://ap.tbo.com/ap/breaking/index.htm State: www.freepint.com/gary/newscenter.htm#State Reuters: http://dailynews.yahoo.com/headlines/ts/index.html FACSNet: www.facsnet.org Major papers: http://newslink.org News search engine: www.newsindex.com General: www.yahoo.com/news STEP 2: GO DIRECTLY TO THE SOURCE: Type in source name at Google: www.google.com, poke around to determine reliabilty of report, dig into site to dope out hiding place, follow hunches. STEP 3: FEDERAL GOVERNMENT ANALYSIS Congressional Budget Office The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) is responsible for economic forecasting and fiscal policy analysis, scorekeeeping, cost projections, and an Annual Report on the Federal Budget. The office also underdakes special budget-related studies at the request of Congress. : www.cbo.gov General Accounting Office: www.gao.gov Congressional Research Service The Congressional Research Service (CRS) is a branch of the Library of Congress that provides objective, nonpartisan research, analysis, and information to assist Congress in its legislative, oversight, and representative functions. U.S. : www.house.gov/markgreen/CRS.htm Or www.house.gov/shays/CRS/CRSProducts.htm National Academies: www.nas.edu Think tanks: Brookings Institution Brookings Institution, at Washington, D.C.; chartered 1927 as a consolidation of the Institute for Government Research (est. 1916), the Institute of Economics (est. 1922), and the Robert S. Brookings Graduate School of Economics and Government (est. 1924). : www.brookings.edu Progressive Policy Institute: www.ppionline.org Urban Institute: www.urban.org Townhall: www.townhall.com Public Agenda: www.publicagenda.org National Issues: www.nationalissues.com NCEW NCEW National Conference of Editorial Writers member John Fleming is editorial page editor of The Anniston Star in Alabama. E-mail him at jfleming@annistonstar.com |
|
||||||||||||||||||
Printer friendly
Cite/link
Email
Feedback
Reader Opinion