Wednesday, December 10, 2008

Obituary for Liz

A nicely written obituary for Liz has been published on The Miami Herald Web site at http://www.miamiherald.com/news/obituaries/story/807999.html

Liz Donovan

Liz Donovan started this blog in May 2003. It seemed appropriate to post here the message about her death that has been shared today on NewsLib and NICAR-L from Megan Waters at The Miami Herald.

From: Waters, Megan
To: The NewsLib mailing list
Date: Wed, Dec 10, 2008 at 10:15 AMjavascript:void(0)
Subject: [newslib] FW: Liz Donovan


All -- We're sad to report that Liz Donovan has passed away. -Megan

-----Original Message-----
From: Hirsch, Rick - Miami
Sent: Wednesday, December 10, 2008 10:06 AM
To: .MIA Newsroom
Subject: Liz Donovan

Staff:

Liz Donovan, longtime news researcher at The Miami Herald and a good friend to many in our newsroom, died at a hospital in Gainesville, Ga. Liz had been battling lung cancer.

Liz worked with Woodward and Bernstein on the Watergate story (she is thanked in the book credits) at the Washington Post before joining The Herald in 1981. Here, she assisted hundreds of reporters on projects ranging from routine to investigative, before retiring in 2004 to Murphy, N.C.

She was a pioneer in database reporting and research, and her Infomaniac Blog was one the first of its kind. On it, she explains the name:

The "Infomaniac" title comes from a 1994 article about a new kind of news researcher by John Ullman in The Database Files newsletter. They named me Infomaniac of the Year that year.

We don't have more details yet, but will share them when we do.

Rick and Anders

Rick Hirsch
Multimedia Editor
The Miami Herald
www.MiamiHerald.com