Journalism for the 21st Century: Online Information, Electronic Databases, and the News

This is a book about the news--the way it is written and the forms it takes. It examines the relation between the content of public information and the potential affect of new technologies on the degree and type of information available in the public forum. Tom Koch uses concrete, casebook examples to demonstrate the degree to which news information can be changed through the efficient and cost effective application of online bibliographic resources accessed by personal computers.

Koch argues that new, computer-based technologies will revolutionize news and public information by fundamentally altering the relation between writer and news subject. He shows how electronic databases, by making enormous amounts of data on virtually every subject available to the news writer or editor, have changed the equation which has defined news since at least the 1920s. To make clear the degree to which these systems will transform news, the author demonstrates how online resources can be used efficiently and inexpensively by generalists. Practical issues of online use are presented within the context of both the parameters of contemporary journalism and the means by which these technologies address its limits. Two separate chapters, one describing search technologies and the other reviewing database organization will be of practical value to both neophyte and journeyman news and public information writers alike. Using examples from his own and other's work, Koch demonstrates ways to carry out simple and inexpensive searches. His book will be especially important to the news or research librarian, reporter, and the public information or public relations writer.