In a few short years, searchable databases on newsroom intranets have gone from novelty to necessity.
Most newsrooms either already have databases - ranging from state payrolls to police bookings, from licenses for dogs to licenses for burglar alarms - or have someone thumbing through old "Dummies" computer books, learning how to use them.
Journalists who use the databases understand their value as a tremendous tool for finding people on deadline. With a few keystrokes they can find the address of the juror who voted to acquit in the murder trial, the unlisted phone of an indicted CEO, and all the campaign contributions from the real estate industry to the new mayor.
Other papers, such as The New York Times, have gone the next step and linked databases together so that journalists can intuitively follow the flow of