Printed sources

There are two basic printed sources: books, and newspapers and their cuttings.

Books and directories

Reporters can sometimes spend hours chasing down a fact which is sitting innocently in a readily-available reference book just an arm’s length away. As with human sources, the job is to know what is available and where it might be found. And that includes being aware of which librarians will know if you don’t. You will be surprised how often such people will look something up for you for the sheer pleasure of proving they can do it.

For journalists, books have four uses – to check spellings and dates, give you basic facts, supply names of potential sources from yearbooks, etc. and provide historical facts or brief anecdotes to enliven a story. The only precaution is, with the first three categories, to make sure you are consulting an up-to-date edition.

In practice, time pressure means that trips to libraries are not always possible and your use of printed sources normally depends on what is to hand at home or in the office. That, plus my natural appetite for trivia and so-called ‘useless information’ (which is often very useful) is why I have over the years assembled a good collection of books of odd facts. on the shelves above my head as I type these words are books of days, chronologies, books about wills, sex lives and obscure origins of the rich and famous, eccentric lives, origins of sayings and slogans, originals of famous characters in fiction, odd classified ads, firsts, inventions, encyclo- paedias of crime, stories behind the songs, etc. All of them have supplied golden little paragraphs to stories and columns and have sometimes provided the entire piece.

Other newspapers’ stories as sources

It is common to be given a story from another paper and asked to stand it up. You should try to match it, not merely regurgitate it. If you are unable to get any new source of your own to substantiate it and your editor is insisting on a story, then quote it with attribution to the original paper. Better still, get an acceptable source to comment on the report.

The written source that should be treated with the most care is newspaper cuttings. Just because it has appeared in print does not mean it is correct. It may have been subsequently corrected or the subject of legal action – something that applies just as well to computerised press cuttings and other databases.

And beware the statement that ‘everyone else is reporting that, so it must be true’. It is often correct, but don’t rely on it. In the autumn

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of 1989, when then-Czechoslovakia was on the brink of what was to become the ‘velvet revolution’, a young woman told reporters that state police officers had beaten to death a student called Martin smid. The story was reported locally and people began to visit the spot where smid died, which soon began to acquire the aura and status of hallowed ground. Reuters wrote the story and Agence France Presse said that three young men had been killed.

The Associated Press failed to have the story. Its desk chiefs were not happy with their Prague bureau and demanded they catch up fast. Their local man was ondrej Hejma, a guitarist who combined journalism with rock music at the expense of neither. Taking none of the earlier smid reports at face value, he began investigating. He and his wife, a doctor, toured local hospitals and mortuaries trying to find someone who had treated smid, dealt with his body – anything. He found not the slightest shred of evidence for the smid story and several days later the rival agencies were forced to report that smid, whoever and wherever he was, had not died on that Prague sidewalk.