Many of us have long-recognized that a top-flight team of news researchers is the marrow of any good news operation. So it is that we point you to a recent column in The Washington Post.
By Deborah Howell
Sunday, July 2, 2006; B06
The
reporting that appears in The Post is supported by an infrastructure of
research that readers do not see, except as credited in the occasional
tag line at the end of a story.
Those tag lines don't begin to
acknowledge the work done for reporters and readers by the News
Research Center. The musty newspaper morgue of lore, brimming with
crumbling clippings in tidy little envelopes, is now full of computers
and researchers that Post journalists can't live without. Yes, there's
still paper — about 7,500 books, 30 periodicals a month and 15 daily
newspapers.
Center director Bridget Roeber said the researchers
are “news junkies, who see themselves not just as librarians but
journalists finding and analyzing original documents, tracking people
down, finding leads, using obscure databases.” [more]