Student
Guide Home
Anatomy of a page
Evaluating for
relevance
Authority of a
Web page
Evaluating for
accuracy
Page types:
Informational pages
News sources
Advocacy web pages
Personal home pages
Web search strategies:
Getting started
Web directories
Search engines
1
Search engines
2
Citing online
sources
Glossary
|
News and journalistic sources
For the last few years, news sites have
become a powerful supplement to regular periodicals and television news
programs. For example, while watching a news story on CNN, you can turn
to your computer and go to CNN Interactive
to find a list of related Web sources, watch or listen to simulcasts of
important related events as they happen, and download pictures. Magazines
like the Atlantic Monthly maintain sites (see The
Atlantic Unbound) where readers can discuss articles in message forums,
contact the author of an article, find updates to older articles, and search
the publisher's archives.
News sources are good for looking
deeper into a story with late breaking, specialized, or interactive information
which often cannot be crammed into the confines of programming schedules
and printed space. They are also good for finding archival transcripts
of full articles. In general, however, they are bad sources to cite in
an academic paper for the simple reason that information posted on news
sites is ephemeral. Because news sites have to be updated constantly, the
article that you cite in a paper this week, may be moved to a different URL
or deleted entirely by next week. Some readers may also prefer to have
a citation from the original publication. If there is a printed version
of an article you find on a news website available at the library, find
the printed version and cite it instead.
Accuracy and authority issues often
apply with Web news sources as well. Examine the four sites below. Which
would be reliable sources and why? How might you use these sources?
Version 1.1
© 1997 Craig Branham
BRANHACC@SLU.EDU
Saint Louis University
Created: 27-March-97
Last Modified: 06-Oct-97
URL for this Document: http://www.slu.edu/departments/english/research/page2.html
|