The Craft of Research

You will receive your second research grade of the semester on the enterprise story.  I will again operate as I did with the news feature. The first draft gets my advice on how to improve the story from a research perspective, and the final draft gets the grade. Same standards apply:

• You must do a clip search in Nexis and/or Factiva on at least one facet of the story. (More is better.)  Show me your search strategies and put citations on your research source list, not links to Nexis or Factiva search results.
• Your research source list must be annotated or footnoted in a way that makes it clear what information you used from the listed sources in your story.  Bare lists of links are not acceptable.

As I mentioned in class, if you want to do a “research-inspired” enterprise story, I’m willing to give you extra help on your pitch and throughout the writing process.  However, I ask that you read this first.  My tips for last semester’s research-inspired enterprise story will make it much clearer what I expect, and what pitfalls to avoid.