FINDING INFORMATION AND GATHERING FACTS

News is developed from the journalist’s observation of events, from interview with the people involved and by research in records, files and reference material. This material is supplemented by the journalist’s general knowledge, primarily on how things work. To enrich background knowledge, the journalist seeks a wide range of experiences, reads widely and knows how to use a variety of reference materials.

The news story stands on facts, and the facts that are most convincing are those that the reporter gathers by direct observations.

●Terror Underground

Pushing to the front of a crowd, asking questions that embarrass sources, refusing to be put off by an uncooperative official – this can be the daily routine for reporters. Some newcomers to journalism find this behavior aggressive and discourteous. No reporter should be impolite, but the reporter’s job is to gather information for people who want to know and who need to know, and so beginners must overcome their timidity.

The reporter who has observed the event is able to make the story come alive for readers. But it is not always possible to witness the event, such as, when a bank is robbed, truck slams into a car or a flash flood rips out a bridge. These happen so quickly, only sheer luck would have the reporter there at the moment the news breaks. In these situation, the reporter turns to sources for information – eyewitnesses and authorities.

●Talk to Participants

The reporter covering a flood will try to reach those on the scene, someone who saw the water’s surge carry off the bridge. If he or she cannot find an eyewitness, the reporter will settle for quotes from someone who can attest to the storm’s fury.

The reporter covering a fatal accident will try to talk to a passenger or the driver, if the accident is worth a detailed story. If this is not possible, the reporter will try to reconstruct the event from the investigating officer’s written report.

Three Basic Sources of Information:

1. Direct Observation
2. Human sources. People who have witnessed the event; authorities and experts who know about the subject, and people who are involved in the event.
3. Reports, documents, and reference material. This includes newspaper clippings; film and tape form broadcast station libraries; minutes of meeting; tape recordings; court, police and legislative records; budgets or tax records.

Most stories combine all three types of sources. The only problems for the journalist are knowing what’s available and knowing how to locate it.

* What’s there. There is no easy way to learn this. But the journalists who know how systems work can put their hands on records and documents because they know what has to be filed, when it is filed and where it is.
* Getting it. All information – with few exceptions – in departments and agencies that are tax supported is available to the public. The beat reporter who befriends the people who keep records is likely to have access to them.

●Data Base

A computerized data base is a machine-readable storehouse of information. A data base saves the reporter time, provides the most recent information and allows access to information usually not available anywhere else, or available only through expensive travel and telephone calls. An important source of information is the federal government.

●Polls

Public opinion polls are a major source of information for news stories. Polls are a systematic way of finding out what people say they are thinking about at a given time. They are use to determine how people feel about a wide variety of issues. Polls are conducted by hundreds of organizations, including newspaper and broadcast stations.

The results of polls can be use to predict how people will act in the immediate future. But since people change their minds, long-range forecasts are dangerous. Also, times change and new circumstances influence people. Polls can tell us what people in various group prefer: what ethnic and racial groups favor. The can identify groups by income, education, occupation, religion, politics and tell us what these subgroups favor.

●Background is Essential

Another source of material essential to the content of the news story is the reporter’s background knowledge, the information he or she has about the subject. When a reporter is sent out an unfamiliar story, he or she has to take a quick course in the nature of the event. No one is expected to know every detail of every subject. But editors do expect their writers and copy editors to consult the appropriate references.

●A Reporter’s Range of Knowledge – Know the Beat

A reporter should know how things work on his or her beat. The police reporter knows the chain of command in the police department, why police officers sometimes throw the book at offenders and how juveniles are used by drug pushers to avoid felony arrests.

●Know the Community

The reporter should also know how things work in the society. The reporter should know about:

* The political process – how the major and the city council are elected; who appoints the police chief; whether the mayor or the council is the source of power; how the judicial system work.
* The social setting – who the influential people in town are; how people get along with each other; the racial, religious and ethnic makeup of the community.
* The economics of the city – how people make a living; the major employers; who the power brokers are; the relationship of business and politics.

●Press Law and History

Journalists also need to know press law, the history of the press and the special needs of their newspapers and stations. An understanding of the laws of libel and privacy helps reporters avoid troublesome legal suits and encourage them to be venturesome.

Understanding the history of the press opens the past to the journalist. Knowledge of those who helped to make the press a bastion of democracy gives the journalist courage when attacked, stamina when the routine approaches drudgery and confidence when journalism is belittled.

●The Perpetual Student

The reporter never stops learning. He or she is always replenishing the storehouse of knowledge essential to the journalist. A good reporter is a student all his or her life. Each new assignment demands a crash course in the theory and practice of yet another profession or system. Information has a way of linking, of patterning. As the journalist finds out, often to his or her amazement, knowledge comes together.

●Current Events

The journalist also knows what is happening in the community, state, nation and the world. Reporters keep up by moving among all kinds of people and by seeking out diverse experiences. But experience is not enough. Journalists read – they read everything from geography and history to fiction.

Ideas and information valuable to journalists can also be found in magazines. Keeping up also involves learning what the tangled events of the nation and the world mean. This requires the journalist to seek out interpretative columns in newspaper and in magazines of opinion.

●Favorite Authors

Books are helpful in two ways. Non-fiction books can aid the reporter in the accumulation of background information. Fiction has been an inspiration to many news writers teaching style and the use of dialogue and description.

●References Work

The references begin with the telephone directory and the dictionary. In cities where there is a city directory, this should be added to the list of essentials. The telephone directory is the authoritative references for the spelling of names and for address and telephone numbers. The dictionary is the authoritative source for correct spelling. There is no excuse for incorrectly spelled words.

●Research

Journalists seem unwilling to admit that they do research. Too stuffy, too academic. But a lot of reporting is research. The computer has helped reporters do sophisticated research. The computer, an information processing machine can digest, sort and present vast amounts of material that would take reporters weeks to put together.

●Localizing

Extensive reading and thorough research turn up materials that reporters can localize. By localizing a story, we mean taking some national or international development and applying it locally.

●Last – or Lost – Words

No matter how wide the reporter’s range of knowledge may be, no matter how assiduously he or she keeps up with the news and events in city, state and nation, all this will be wasted unless the reporter has common sense.

●Taking Notes

In gathering all this information – from references, research, interviews, and direct observation – reporters take notes. Few reporters have total recall, and only the suicidal would dare to trust to memory the spelling of names, exact addresses and other specific information. Some reporters put their faith in the tape recorder, which is all right for the sit-down interview. But on breaking stories and with people who might freeze up at the idea they are being recorded, notes are best.

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~ by mengapakita on March 19, 2009.