Q: I’m a librarian who has been doing research for the past 18 years in the law field: law firm, public law library, now a law school. Since I got my masters of library science in 1995 (and left the law firm), it has always been a desire of mine to work for a news organization.

Now I have my chance at a job as a news researcher! I passed a phone interview a couple of weeks ago and have an appointment for an in-person interview in about 10 days for a newspaper in a large California city.

I have all of the online research skills they ask for but no “preferred data manipulation” skills except for some familiarity with Excel and Access. Obviously they don’t see this as too much of a barrier since they’re having me spend a day with them (meeting about eight different editors). I see this job as providing me with more challenge than I currently get. Any tips or thoughts?

Hopeful

A: I am excited for you, but concerned about your lack of experience in "preferred data manipulation." This term is not that common and is not used in many newsrooms, but it applies to working with Excel or Access, as you say, or perhaps FoxPro or SQL. Can you find out which programs they're using? I'm not suggesting you learn them in 10 days, but that you at least crack a book on one or two of them.

A bigger help, I think, would be to show these editors that you have some journalistic traits. The last thing they want is an expert researcher who is clueless about journalism. These editors likely know a whole lot more about journalism than they do about data storage, retrieval or manipulation, but they will question you on how you can apply those skills to journalism.

Your first source should be the paper itself. Know what they do, where they are using database research now and where a little more would enhance the news coverage.

The editors' questions regarding journalism will likely be at two tiers: the easy tier will be to determine if you are much of a news junkie. Do you read papers? Do you care about news? Do you know what is going on? What do you read? What do you know of politics, government, contemporary issues? The more sophisticated tier -- the one you want to elevate the interview to -- is what you can bring to the party. Don't expect them to look to you for writing, but news judgment, curiosity and the ability to translate data into something that the reporting and editing staff can work with.

Good luck! Let us know how you do!

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