How to boost your research capabilities with free tools
By Esther Landhuis / California Fellow
A packed HJ26 audience learned how to make better use of two free tools to find hard-to-reach sources and speed reporting: LinkedIn and Google Pinpoint.
Many use LinkedIn to stay connected with friends and colleagues, but it’s also a powerful reporting tool. Each connection expands your reach, and journalists have an advantage because their networks cross many industries, said Tom Scheck, investigations editor at the Minnesota Star Tribune.
LinkedIn now uses AI-assisted search, a huge improvement within the past six months, said Scheck. For example, in a quick search for people who could discuss the recent merger between Minnesota-based North Memorial Health and Sanford Health, typing “North Memorial Health care nurses union leader” into the search bar pulled up a promising source.
Instead of entering a name or organization, press the spacebar and then Enter. LinkedIn opens a menu of search filters: posts, people, products, jobs, companies, groups, events, schools, services and courses.
Searching “people” pulls up additional sub-filters (e.g., locations and current companies), such that typing “pfoa and drinking water harm” into the search bar and adding “Minneapolis” as a location could quickly refine a list of potential sources.
Searching posts for quoted phrases such as “I was laid off” (or alternate terms “let go” or “lost my job”) could help identify sources who were recently laid off from specific companies.
If you’re looking for whistleblowers, often the best people to talk with are recent retirees, Scheck said. To find them, search under “people,” then click “all filters” to access the “current companies” and “past companies” fields.
AI-assisted search is available to all LinkedIn users. Premium unlocks stronger search filters and more company information, and for extra fees Recruiter Lite goes deeper, Scheck said.
If you don’t have premium membership, join the LinkedIn for Journalists group. After attending one of the quarterly webinars, verified reporters and editors can get a free year of LinkedIn Premium Business, which lets you message people outside your network. You can renew your free subscription each year by retaking the webinar.
Another tool discussed at HJ26 was Google Pinpoint, which launched in 2020 to help journalists and researchers analyze large collections of documents and files. Its link (http://g.co/pinpoint) can be hard to find by googling, said Colleen Kimmett, a former journalist who works as a trainer at Google News Initiative.
Free with a Google account, Pinpoint like NotebookLM uses AI to help analyze source material, but it offers substantially more storage and supports a wider range of file types.
Pinpoint accounts provide 100 gigabytes of storage — enough for 200,000 files (PDFs, images, audio files, emails, slideshows, Word documents, videos and URLs).
Collections of documents and files are private by default. “The material you upload is not used to train Google AI models,” Kimmett said. Pinpoint collections can be shared with collaborators in a similar manner as Google Docs and Sheets.
Esther Landhuis is a freelance journalist based in the San Francisco Bay Area.
