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"Hey, it's Iris. Leave a message!"
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Hi, yes! This is she :)
That's very sweet of Jaime, and I'm sure I can make some time.

What's your name, and what would you specifically like to learn?

I'm Norman! It's nice to meet you.

I think I should start with the best ways to research.

Hi Norman! It's nice to meet you too.

That depends on what you want to research.
For example, I write a lot of politics, so I read the news and ask people for their stories, but scientists will read articles and perform their own experiments in the lab.

What did you want to research? We can narrow it down from there.

Politics and history, I think.

For politics, I would start both with the Majority Report (for imPort-related news) and the local newspapers. Heropa Daily, Nonah Newsprint or the Nonah Post, Dechima Inquistor, and the Maurtia Falls Times. National papers like the Walled Street Journal couldn't hurt.

Check their front pages and their politics section. What stories are they covering? What stories are they NOT covering? Every issue has two sides, and depending on the story, the lack of coverage may indicate what's going on.

Same for history, though that kind of research also involves a trip to the local library.

[Compare and contrast. That can reveal a lot.]

Do the cities have any other newspapers too?

[Well, reputable ones. He's come across some in Heropa, but he's not sure how trustworthy they are.]

They do. Every city has smaller, local newspapers centered on certain neighborhoods, but they don't always have the budget to write everything they'd like.

Oftentimes, online sources are just as valuable in finding out what matters to a neighborhood.

[Of course, though...]

I don't know how to find things online as well.

I can't blame you. That can be hard.
I start with Schmoogle, usually, and I'll set up news alerts to email me any time a media outlet posts about a topic and/or person that interests me.

Beyond that, it's all about figuring out what's a reliable source and what ISN'T, nine times out of ten.

How do you tell what's reliable?

There are a lot of ways. First, so that I'm not going over anything you might already know - have you ever had a library information session? If not, I would ask them to schedule one. They have whole programs devoted to reliability. :)

The short version: you figure out if something is reliable by checking the domain and the url. A reputable company will own their own news website. They'll take their own pictures, which you can check with a reverse image search. If they're quoting someone like a professor, look up the professor. Do they have the degree that they said they did?

It's all about fact-checking, and making sure that what someone says is actually true.

I haven't! I'll have to schedule that.

So you need to make sure that people really know what they're talking about and that they're doing the work. That makes sense.

Exactly. In this day, you can't take everything at face value.

All you can do is see where the news gets its news, and decide for yourself whether to believe it or not. Not every website is out to push a lie, but they DO have a story they want to tell.

Thank you! This helps a lot.

No problem, Norman! Anytime you have a question, I'm only a text away.

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