Become familiar with public records, what they look like, what kinds of information one can find in them and where they are located. If you don't know what a financial disclosure sheet or an annual corporate report or a credit report or a death record contains, you will have difficulty in recognizing their significance to a news investigation. Build your own networks of public records librarians who can help you retrieve this information. Databases facilitate the search, of course, but not all records are online. The author has a useful chapter on privacy issues affecting public records.
Appendices offer examples of various types of records.
Learn how to interview reporters. Demonstrate to reporters how one type of question gets one type of information, while a differently worded search strategy yields different, sometimes more precise results. Offer to sit in on news staff meetings. This is where the editors and key reporters discuss ideas for special projects and investigative series. Listen, make notes and later come up with ideas and proposals about how the library can research these topics.