Journalists’ newsroom roles and their World Wide Web search habits. A paper presented to the Newspaper Division, Southeast colloquium, Association for Education

This paper reports an analysis of how newsroom staff members search for information on the World Wide Web. Daily newspaper data collected in 1998 and 1999 were analyzed to determine if computer-assisted reporting supervisors, news researchers, general assignment and beat reporters, news editors, and newsroom technical specialists differed in how they searched for information on the Web. Findings indicated that there are clear differences in how the group members search. The analysis found there is a “computer elite ” of sophisticated users formed by information specialists. A second group, formed by computer specialists, also has advanced skills. Reporters and their editors form a third level of users, but they take less advantage of search tools and their advanced features.-Page 3