News archives offer a rich historical record. But if the reader or the journalist wants to learn about a new topic with a traditional search engine, they must enter a query and begin reading or skimming old articles one-by-one, slowly piecing together an intricate web of people, organizations, events, places, topics, concepts, and social forces that make up "the news." We propose Rookie, which began as an attempt to build a useful tool for journalists. With Rookie, a user's query generates an interactive timeline, a list of important related subjects, and a summary of matching articles -- all displayed together as a collection of interactive linked views. Users click and drag along the timeline to select certain date ranges, automatically regenerating the summary and subject list at interactive speed.