Short answer, there is little if any difference as far as how we gather the information. The difference is formatting. Because nearly every story we do is asking questions that have never been asked of people who have never or rarely been questioned, we gather treasure troves of invaluable information – facts – about the companies and people we cover. The best journalists base facts on what the most credible, authoritative sources say and always take readers on every step of the journey they took to get the information being presented. Good journalists show how they came to know what they know and they take pains not to “tell.”
In the profiles, we may not take readers on that “show, not tell” journey if we’ve already done so in our reporting. We will provide and update information we gather during the course of our reporting in the profiles and refer readers to the original reports where the information first appeared.
Often, we gather information we end up not using in a story during the course of reporting a story. This is another example of how the databases are produced.
Note: Our first priority is our reporting; however, in late 2023/2024, we are aiming to ramp up the databases.
