Amster recalls her research efforts. Doris Batliner What follows is an account of how a team of news librarians, including Sharon Bidwell, worked together to inform the public of a bus accident that turned into a tragedy claiming 27 young lives near Carrollton, Kentucky. The news coverage earned the Louisville Courier-Journal a Pulitzer Prise in 1989. He gives evidence how news library staffers are part of the reporting process. One, the series on arson, won a Pulitzer for the Star-Tribune in 1990.
Information is shared and ideas and leads spring from conversations and compared notes.
The 'Boss Hog' series incorporated this philosophy of teamwork unlike any story we'd worked on in the past. In 1997 the Times-Picayune of New Orleans, LA celebrated its first two Pulitizers, one for public service and a second for cartoonist Walt Handelsman. The public service award came for an eight-day series on how the world's fisheries are being destroyed by greedy fishermen, pollution and uncontrolled growth. A task force of 13 reporters, editors, photographers as well as the papers news librarians took a global look at the problem. Readers will quickly note that Burris and her skilled staff played different, but increasingly essential roles among top newspaper research departments, that of database trainers, spreadsheet gurus and Internet coaches.