{
  "id": "1998-october-manning-and-kanigher-offer-these-tips-for-starting-internet-searches",
  "slug": "1998-october-manning-and-kanigher-offer-these-tips-for-starting-internet-searches",
  "url": "https://dwillis.github.io/uplink/article/1998-october-manning-and-kanigher-offer-these-tips-for-starting-internet-searches.html",
  "year": 1998,
  "month": "October",
  "monthNum": 10,
  "headline": "Manning and Kanigher offer these tips for starting Internet searches",
  "kicker": "",
  "author_name": "Mary Manning and Steve Kanigher",
  "author_title": "Reporters",
  "affiliation": "Las Vegas Sun",
  "summary": "Las Vegas Sun reporters Manning and Kanigher share internet research strategies used to investigate the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste project, demonstrating how online resources including government databases, scientist contacts, and political funding records reduced their research time from six months to three months.",
  "keywords": [
    "research",
    "nuclear",
    "internet"
  ],
  "topics": [
    "Investigative Methods",
    "Technology",
    "Government & Politics"
  ],
  "technologies": [
    "Internet",
    "World Wide Web",
    "Email"
  ],
  "full_text": "MANNING AND KANIGHER OFFER THESE TIPS FOR STARTING INTERNET SEARCHES:\n\nSTART WITH SOMETHING YOU KNOW: A PERSON'S OR COMPANY'S NAME, PLACE OR A KEY WORD FROM YOUR PROJECT. THIS WILL LEAD TO MAJOR WEB SITES LINKED TO YOUR ORIGINAL REQUEST AND A WEALTH OF INFORMATION, MUCH MORE THAN YOU NEED. BUT A PATTERN OF INFORMATION WILL EMERGE.\n\nLOOK CAREFULLY AT HOW OFTEN THE WEB SITE IS UPDATED. SOME SITES ARE SO OUT-OF-DATE THAT THEY FUNCTION AS HISTORICAL SOURCES, NOT NEWS SOURCES.\n\nONCE YOU HAVE COMPUTER-GENERATED INFORMATION, DOUBLE-CHECK IT WITH OTHER SOURCES. TIE UP LOOSE ENDS THROUGH OTHER SOURCES.\n\nAs Las Vegas Sun reporters, we collaborated on a five-day series appearing from May 31 until June 4, 1998 on the federal government's Yucca Mountain Project. We cut our research time considerably thanks to computer research.\n\nInstead of more than six months of research, it took us about three months to investigate the politics and the science of the nuclear waste project at Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.\n\nThe series, \"Science vs. Politics,\" examined both scientific issues and political maneuvers that put Yucca Mountain on the federal government's map as the only site in the nation under study as a high-level nuclear waste repository.\n\nDeep PACground\n\nBackground information on politicians, pro-nuclear lobbyists and anti-nuclear groups were all available at various Web sites through one of five dedicated computers available in the Sun's newsroom. We started with the names of major political players such as Senators Frank Murkowski and Larry Craig, who are leading the congressional pack to put nuclear waste in Nevada.\n\nKanigher did his initial research on where and to whom political funds went by exploring the Internet. He tracked campaign contributions, nuclear PAC monies and how much money had been spent on the nuclear waste management project.\n\nBy starting with individual senators and congressmen, we found nuclear PACs that contributed to their campaigns, then tracked the nuclear funds through Federal Election Commission records, all available on the Web.\n\nNuclear waste deposits\n\nManning tracked scientific leads. She researched articles and corresponded with scientists working in New Mexico, Texas and Siberia on deep, hot water possibly rising inside Yucca Mountain and disrupting the engineered repository.\n\nFormer DOE scientist Jerry Szymanski had proposed the theory that Yucca Mountain's seismic and volcanic activity could force water deep within the earth to invade the repository. Although Szymanski is no longer a DOE geologist, he is still presenting his case to oversight committees. Other scientists around the world had weighed in on the Yucca Mountain debate, so Manning contacted them through email.\n\nThere are also Web pages for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the agency in charge of licensing a nuclear repository, as well as the independent scientific panel called the Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board.\n\nWith email interviews, the questions can be precise, and follow-up questions and clarifications can be completed in one day, even in Siberia, rather than playing telephone tag or using snailmail over days.\n\nResearch tools\n\nWhile the Las Vegas Sun encourages all its reporters to use the Internet as much as possible, computer research is a tool, not the end-all for getting the story. Besides computer-assisted searches, you have to do a lot of interviews and use other sources to verify information.\n\nFor example, after following the trail of nuclear industry funds into congressional pockets from initial searches conducted on the Web, Kanigher sent the computer-generated information and his questions to the Center for Responsive Politics, a congressional watchdog group. For a $75 fee, the center offered a detailed road map of how the nuclear PACs spent their money.\n\nWe think that computer research is great for checking out Web sites, gathering background information and focusing the scope of research for large projects such as the nuclear waste series.\n\nThe other side of Internet research - after the excitement of finding mountains of information - brought us back to earth. Legwork, plenty of perspiration and old-fashioned, follow-up digging were necessary to do a thorough job.\n\nMary Manning can be reached by email at manning@lasvegassun.com Steve Kanigher can be reached at steve@lasvegassun.com",
  "provenance": {
    "extracted_by": "anthropic/claude-sonnet-4-6",
    "extracted_at": "2026-07-05",
    "verified": true
  },
  "similar": [
    {
      "slug": "1998-october-political-science",
      "score": 0.603
    },
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    {
      "slug": "2002-march-april-handy-internet-resources-for-reporters",
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  ],
  "html_url": "https://dwillis.github.io/uplink/article/1998-october-manning-and-kanigher-offer-these-tips-for-starting-internet-searches.html",
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