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NewsLib and Sept. 11, 2001 |
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Tulloch,
A. (2001).News Librarians’ Rely on Colleagues During Crisis:
The Role of the NewsLib List Group during and after the September 11, 2001 Terrorist Attacks on the United States. Paula
Hane, a contributing editor to Information
Today and editor of Newsbreaks,
issued an editorial on September 17, 2001 entitled, “Information Professionals
Respond Following Terrorist Attacks.” (1) This article inspired me to look at
a specific group of information professionals.
This group of information professionals performs both ready-reference and
in-depth research for its clients. Most
members of this group are true generalists, make little money, and work on
extremely tight deadlines. (Perhaps
not surprisingly, their interactions on their newsgroup – NewsLib -- seem
similar in many ways to our own ESU-SLIM class listgroups.)
The individuals in this group of information professionals are generally
known as news librarians or news researchers.
To gain some insight into their work, I followed their interactions in
the NewsLib group from September 11, 2001 to September 21, 2001.
From
my review of approximately 300 email postings during the period from September
11, 2001 to September 21, 2001, I gathered three distinct impressions of news
librarians/news researchers. I was
impressed by their professionalism, the diversity within the group, and,
perhaps, most of all, by their willingness to share and assist each other –
their sense of community -- especially during such a difficult time in our
history. Professionalism Postings
to NewsLib in the days prior to September 11, 2001 consisted of many of the
issues that other librarians and researchers face.
Postings included solicitations for help in finding resources, accessing
resources, verifying resources, and assessing the quality of resources.
Other topics included the following:
a discussion about when news
researchers “should” and “should not” receive research credit in a
story; a discussion about copyright infringement; and, a survey solicitation by
a group of researchers wanting to gather data on the “state of news
libraries” for an upcoming conference. (2)
From
September 11, 2001 to September 14, 2001 postings increased four-fold on NewsLib
as news librarians and researchers searched for information on behalf of a
stunned public. These people seemed
to understand that they had a job that HAD to be done and they searched, shared,
and asked for help, all in an extremely professional but human manner. The first question on the morning of September 11 was posted
by Shelley Lavey of the Detroit Free Press
at 9:24 am EST. Shelley asked the
question that probably crossed the public’s mind later in the day. “Has
anyone come across any significance to the date of September 11 that might be
related to the events at the World Trade Center today?” (3) In
the midst of postings about the possible significance of September 11, Mike
Reilly, a professor of journalism, offered his professional support.
“For those of you researching and
backgrounding air disasters, there are reliable resources at www.journaliststoolbox.com
It has an entire section on airline disasters.
Share with your newsrooms. Take
care, Mike Reilly.” By
11:00 am EST, Abigail Brigham at the CNN
library in New York shared a link to a list of tenants at the World Trade
Center. By noon,
Mari Keefe of ComputerWorld
posted specific facts (and their sources) about the World Trade Center in
response to the frantic inquiry, “Anybody got the fast facts like how many
tons of concrete, etc? I keep
getting a 404 message! “ by Suzanne Henderson of the Charleston
Post and Courier. In
the few hours following the attacks, other news librarians shared information
about web sites that track enroute flights.
They also shared their frustration with these flight-tracking sites and
other sites being overwhelmed, as well as reporting to each other that the live
feed for the FAA flight-tracking web site had been suspended. Other requests and
responses on NewsLib focused on gathering and putting together timelines of
terrorist activities over the last twenty years.
Later
in the day on September 11, researchers tried to verify among each other stories
about price gouging at gas station. They
also took “roll” on who had put out special edition newspapers (4). Finally,
they continued to share resources. By
early evening Gary Price, an “information and Internet consultant” in
Washington DC, announced that he had begun compiling links to transcripts of
world leaders’ responses to the attacks on his web site.
At 7:30 pm EST, Jill
Konieczko, MLS, a Lexis-Nexis marketing manager announced to her colleagues that
beginning at 9pm EST, special packaged content would be available for free.
Noted Konieczko, “Our own information professionals at Lexis-Nexis are
crafting searches to deliver on-point information for analysis and crisis
management on the following topics: Ms. Konieczcko encouraged her colleagues to contact
her to suggest additional topics and said that her own team would be
continuously adding content. What
most impressed me about Ms. Koniecscko’s letter to her colleagues and patrons
on NewsLib was her acknowledgment of the difficult job that they were doing and
would continue to do in the days ahead. On September 11, when I remember doing
little but watch the news coverage that these individuals helped to produce, these
information professionals knew they had a job to do and they did it.
Ms. Koniecscko described this situation well in her note to NewsLib.
“We rely on your coverage to grapple with the details, understand the
weight of the day's events, and persevere…
Again, please know that we are thinking of you, and please let us know
what we at LexisNexis can do to better assist you in your research in these very
difficult times.” Diversity: In
addition to the professionalism displayed by NewsLibbers, I was struck by the
diversity of the group. NewsLib has
over 1250 subscribers from 22 different countries.
These statistics certainly speak to the diversity of its members, but
what impresses and surprises me is the diversity of news organizations that
contribute to NewsLib. Researchers
from newspapers and news organizations with circulations/audiences of 100,000
have equal footing with organizations with circulations/audiences of 1,000,000
on NewsLib. A researcher from the Seattle
Times soliciting information from the NewsLib group might receive responses
from a researcher at NBC, a news librarian at the Worcester Telegram & Gazette, an independent information
professional, or a researcher from the Brazilian National News Agency.
NewsLibbers also recognize the value of diverse opinions.
Researchers in the United States called on Canadian researchers to get
the facts on Gordon Sinclair, whose column about America had been circulating
over the Internet in the day or two following the attacks.
Similarly, early this week, a colleague in Belgium answered a question
from a colleague in the United States about production of American flags outside
of the United States. The NewsLib
group highlights the democratic nature of information (information wants to be
free!) and the value of different sources of information. Community: My
final and over-riding impression of NewsLibbers is their commitment to assist
each other in a common goal: to disseminate specific, validated, usable
information to the public as quickly as possible.
I have already noted examples of the sharing of information that goes on
among NewsLibbers; now let me share a few additional examples of NewsLibbers’
“community spirit.” At 3 pm EST on September 11, Richard Geiger of the San Francisco Chronicle couldn’t access the
“Government Interagency Domestic Terrorism Concept of Operations Plan (pdf)”
(January 2001) from the FBI web site, so he asked for assistance and received
the document as an attachment from a colleague. Also on September 11, Mari Keefe of Computer World happened to be working remotely and could not reach
some co-workers that normally assisted her in acquiring photos. In the absence
of direct assistance from her co-workers, Leigh
Montgomery of The Christian Science
Monitor came to Mari’s aid by providing all of the contact names and
numbers necessary for Mari to purchase photos from Reuters.
This happened within 8 minutes of Mari posting her initial request for
assistance. Later in the week, the same kind of
“community spirit” was evident.
A news librarian in the Netherlands received a faxed copy of a 1980
article from the Far Eastern Economic
Review from a colleague in Canada. The
Canadian librarian found the article – an article about the last king of
Afghanistan – copied it, and sent it to the Dutch librarian… all within 20
minutes of the initial request. If
NewsLibbers are representative of news librarians overall, they are a tight-knit
community indeed. Closing Remarks
In
closing, I want to introduce you to the moderator of the NewsLib group. Her name
is Barbara Semonche ( semonch@metalab.unc.edu
) and she is Library Director at the University of North Carolina –Chapel Hill
School of Journalism and Mass Communications.
On September 13, she announced that she had gathered the threads of the
conversations and organized the resources for the benefit of the news community
on a web site entitled: September
11, 2001: NewsLib research queries following the World Trade Center Attack.
In her closing remarks, Barbara Semonche
said, “May I say that you are all extraordinary in your efforts to
research and share data and information during this tragedy. You are truly
impressive under deadline pressure, way beyond ‘just doing your job.’”
Indeed. I will be contacting
Barbara by email in the upcoming weeks to gain more insight into NewsLib, news
librarians, and her assessment of how this group performed in the midst of this
crisis. I will keep you posted! (1)
Full text available at: http://www.infotoday.com/newsbreaks/nb010917-1.htm (2)
News
Libraries: An Assessment
A lot of changes are taking place in newsrooms and news research
libraries across the country. Ownership changes, new content management
concerns, tightening budgets, and expanding publication / distribution options
are creating new opportunities, and new challenges. The University of Minnesota's Institute for New Media Studies
and Minnesota Journalism Center are planning a summit meeting on these changes,
opportunities and challenges to be held Nov. 15-16, 2001. An important step in
preparing for the summit is to get a full picture of where the changes are
occurring, and the impact of these changes on the dynamic relationship between
newsrooms and news libraries. Please an overview of this research project and
the summit at http://www.inms.umn.edu/research/newslib/overview.htm. (3)
Three
days later, that question was still being debated on NewsLib. The only consensus
reached on an accurate and direct connection on the significance of September 11
was this: September 11 was the 10th
anniversary of the United Nation’s sponsored Day of Peace. (4)
Many
reported that these special editions were the first their papers had published
since the Kennedy assassination. |
| Copyright 2003 - The Park Library - School of Journalism and Mass Communication - University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill |