About Business Research Sources, a Reference Navigator
by F. Patrick Butler
Foreword
How I wish that Patrick Butler's book had been available years ago! The grief it would have spared me.
During my years reporting on the economy, I could have used his Business Research Sources on countless occasions. The hours I could have saved in researching sources of information. But I'll get to that in a moment.
First, though, I should mention that beyond being an invaluable guide to specific sources of information, Patrick Butler's book serves a broader purpose in helping readers to develop invaluable research skills. Let me tell you how, many years ago, I learned the hard way the importance of developing such skills.
I had it drummed into me by some tough city editors.
My earliest newspaper job was writing obituaries for the Providence (Rhode Island) Journal. The very first day at the paper I wrote that a deceased person was interned in the Woodlawn Cemetery.
"Dummy," exclaimed the city editor, a man not noted for his diplomacy, "interned is what happens to prisoners of war. Interred is for corpses."
Quick research into a basic research tome (not tomb) known as the dictionary would have spared me the sneers I could sense from others in the newsroom.
I also learned about the importance of speed in getting at research information in my first real job as a journalist on the midnight shift of the foreign-news desk at International News Service in New York. INS was, to put it bluntly, cheap. The company pinched pennies, liras, rubles, centimes, and every other currency in the countries where it had correspondents covering the news.
This was in the days before satellites and other high-tech forms of communication. Correspondents sent their dispatches by cable, an international telegram transmitted by radio or under-the-ocean cables. The cost per word of the dispatches depended on the speed of service desired; the faster the service, the higher the rate. To save money INS correspondents were instructed to send only the first few words of a news story "urgent," the most expensive rate, and to follow up with details by the cheapest rate, even though it might take an hour or more for the details to reach New York. In the meantime, the writer (me, for one) on the foreign desk was to take the few words (such as "STALIN DEAD") in the urgent-rate cable and spin it into a story to move quickly on the news wire in the usually futile hope of beating the Associated Press and United Press in servicing clients with the news.
That meant drawing on whatever knowledge the writer might have on the particular subject to expand immediately on the cryptic cable ("JOSEF STALIN, WHO RULED THE SOVIET UNION WITH AN IRON HAND, DIED TODAY . . . ETC.") and then to flesh out the report in short takes with material gleaned from reference sources. That was the challenge: to quickly go to sources available in the INS office for background material-the date of Stalin's birth, his career in the Communist Party, his meetings with American presidents, and so on.
Those sources were limited, including little more than the bureau news clippings "morgue," the encyclopedia, and the World Almanac.
Happily, the average researcher today-whether a student, a journalist, a businessman or woman-has a virtually unlimited reservoir of sources (an overabundance, might be a more accurate description) where answers are to be found. The big problem is to identify the sources and to know how to use them effectively.
Enter Patrick Butler.
Dr. Butler has skillfully undertaken the role of Sherpa on the treacherous slopes of the mountains of available business data, and he guides the reader with precision and even a generous ration of wit.
The problem for anyone doing research in the information age is not a lack of information, but rather how to target the information required for a particular project and how to get to it quickly.
That's what this book accomplishes.
Which brings me back to my regrets that it was not available earlier. As an economics correspondent, I would have used it to seek out people and companies to illustrate television stories. For example, when the monthly government report on the U.S. trade deficit was released, the inevitable problem was how to translate statistics into a visual television piece. That time-consuming task would have been simplified by turning to Dr. Butler's Business Research Sources: A Reference Navigator to locate reference sources that would identify firms engaged in foreign trade and cite the names of officers of those corporations.
The next step would be to arrange to shoot videotape of a corporation's production facilities and do an interview with an officer . . . and presto! sterile statistics would have been converted into the ingredients of a TV report.
Finally, a word about our able and self-effacing guide Patrick Butler, who brings to his project the experience not only of a widely respected college professor, but also of wide-ranging careers as a naval flight officer, a marketing engineer for the Lockheed Aircraft Corporation and in U.S. government.
By Irving R. Levine
former NBC News chief economics correspondent
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