Last Stop at the Station House

Through Amy Rabideau Silvers’ writing it is obvious that Richard Fisher loved the Waukesha Fire Department. She concentrates on the personal side of the story, even though this obituary will be appearing after Fisher has already been buried. She gathered information from: the mortuary form, the newspapers morgue and an interview with Brian Fisher. The story structure is slightly different than the “formula” presented in the book, presenting four paragraphs before saying that Fisher died. The discrepancy may be because this story was constructed after the funeral had taken place.

For my Obituary I will be interviewing Peter Brooks, the South Scott, RHD and my former boss.
Questions from the text:

Q-1: What's the first thing a reporter should do after being assigned a story?
A-1: Provided the story is not breaking news the reporter should research the topic, looking for information about what is happening or who their subjects are. A good source for this would be the newspaper library or “morgue”. There a reporter can find old articles about related events or previous interviews with a person.

Q-2: What are some of the potential problems of using information from news articles you find in commercial databases?
A-2: Privately operated databases that charge a user a fee to take a look at documents they possess can be a good source of information. A reporter must be careful though, even though they may have paid an access fee, they may not be able to reproduce or quote the information they have found due to copyright laws. Another problem with commercial databases is that small pieces of information are usually left out, to make room for things that the web master considers to be more important.