Wikipedia is Not the Enemy.

Daniel O’Donnell of WISN/IHeartRadio and Cara Ogburn of Milwaukee Film Festival give insight on the ever developing world or research and the importance of the skills we are learning today.

The amount of times I have heard “You are going to need these skills in the workplace,” while researching is about the same as the amount of times I heard “You are going to need to do this in high school,” about cursive hand writing in grade school.

The difference is that while during my high school career the only cursive I used was to sign my 7eleven receipts, but research skills are invaluable and forever useful.

What is research and why do we do it? As a six page paper regarding Toyota’s crisis communication looms over my head something Daniel O’Donnell said during our discussion stands out to me,

“ Listen to the people you think are trustworthy”

A lot of what research is revolves around trust. As a researcher, you are trusting the authors of the articles you are citing. As a writer or reporter others are trusting you to put out accurate information.

I am putting my faith into the articles I am using. Therefore I should be using the most reliable and credible sources.

Research requires careful examination and an understand of not only what you are looking for but why you are looking for it. And a perfect place to start is Wikipedia.

Wikipedia. If there was one site that could have been blacklisted by any of my teachers in high school Wiki would be it. Yet both O’Donnell and Ogburn pushed students to use Wikipedia to get a start on their research.

Wikipedia should not by any means be on your source list. But it is a great place to find other articles and scholarly journals. I mean after all, Wikipedia had to get their information from somewhere.

Research doesn’t end with your final college research paper. Think about when you are looking for a new job or when you are working on a new project.

Ogburn and O’Donnell do research daily. Whether its sifting through indie and alternative films to choose for the Milwaukee Film Festival or looking into articles, journals and reports to gather information for a radio.

Research is eternal. It is the fundamental ground work to any program, article, song or job.