News as a Source

News sources can provide insights that scholarly sources may not or that will take a long time to get into scholarly sources. For instance, news sources are excellent for finding out people’s reactions, opinions, and prevailing attitudes around the time of an event.

So whether news sources are good for your assignment depends on your research question. (You’ll find other relevant information at Sources and Information Needs.)

News is a strange term, because even when the information is old, it’s still news. Some sources are great for breaking news, some are great for aggregated (or compiled) news, and others are great for historical news.

While news was transmitted for centuries only in newspapers, news is now transmitted in all formats: via radio, television, and the Internet, in addition to print. Even most newspapers have Internet sites today.

News must be brief because much of it gets reported only moments after an event happens. News reports occur early in the Information Lifecycle. See Publication Formats and the Information Lifecycle for more information.

When Are News Sources Helpful?

• You need breaking news or historical perspectives on a topic (what people were saying at the time).
• You need to learn more about a culture, place, or time period from its own sources.
• You want to keep up with what is happening in the world today.

When Are News Sources of Limited Use?

• You need very detailed analysis by experts.
• You need sources that must be scholarly or modern views on a historical topic.

Mainline and Non-Mainline News Sources

Mainline American news outlets stick with the tradition of trying to report the news as objectively as possibly. That doesn’t mean their reports are perfectly objective, but they are more objective than the non-mainline sources. As a result, mainline news sources are more credible than non-mainline sources. Some examples of mainline American news outlets: The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, The Chicago Tribune, The Los Angeles Times; ABC News, CBS News, NBC News, PBS News, NPR News.

News from non-mainline American news outlets is often mixed with opinions. One way they frequently exhibit bias is that they leave out pertinent facts. Some examples of non-mainline American news outlets: MSNBC, Fox News, Gawker, Reddit.

Types of News Sources

Press Services—News outlets (print, broadcast, and online) get a lot of their news from these services, such as Reuters or Associated Press (AP), which make it unnecessary for individual outlets to send their own reporters everywhere. Services are so broadly used that you may have to look at several news outlets to get a different take on an event or situation.

News aggregators—Aggregators don’t have reporters of their own but simply collect and transmit the news reported by others. Some sources pull news from a variety of places and provide a single place to search for and view multiple stories. You can browse stories or search for a topic. Aggregators tend to have current, but not archival news. Google news and Yahoo News are examples.

Newspaper sites – Many print newspapers also have their own websites. They vary as to how much news they provide for free. Take a look at these examples.

• The Florida Times-Union
• USA Today
• The Boston Globe
• The Times of London
• China Daily, USA edition
• The New York Times

News Databases – Search current, recent, and historical newspaper content in databases provided free by libraries. The FSCJ LLC offers many news databases to students, staff, and faculty. They include:

• America’s News (Newsbank) – contains U.S. news content from local, regional, and national sources including newspapers, broadcast transcripts, wire services, blogs, and more.
• Florida Newspapers (Newsbank) – groups together major Florida newspapers.
• Access World News (Newsbank) – contains news articles from various countries and source types; ideal for exploring issues and events at the local, regional, national, and international levels.
• New York Times Historical (Proquest) – contains full-text and full-image articles, covering the period from 1851-2007.
• News (Gale OneFile) – contains global news and U.S. regional, national, and local news from major newspapers, radio, and TV broadcasts.

See the complete list of FSCJ’s News and Current Events databases. Additionally, there are some historical newspaper collections hosted by state universities and the Library of Congress that you can access for free:

• Florida Digital Newspaper Library, hosted by the University of Florida, provides access to the news and history of Florida.
• Central Florida Memory is a digitization project hosted by the University of Central Florida Library, in collaboration with the Orange County Regional History Center, and the Orange County Library System.
• Chronicling America hosted by the Library of Congress and produced by the National Digital Newspaper Program (NDNP), has information about historic newspapers and select digitized newspaper pages.

• ABC News
• BBC
• CNN
• NPR News

Blogs – Sometimes these are good sources for breaking news, as well as commentary on current events and scholarship. Authors who write more objectively elsewhere can share more insights and opinions, more initial questions and findings about a study before they are ready to release definitive data and conclusions about their research.

Citizen Journalism – A handful of websites cater to those members of the general public who want to report breaking news and submit their own photos and videos on a wide range of topics. Most of the people who do this now use social media platforms, and the few remaining sites dedicated to citizen journalism have changed their model to have more oversight of what is published. Examples of such sources include WikiNews and Reddit. For more details on the history and development of citizen journalism, including addressing some of the pros and cons, read Understanding Citizen Journalism.

News Feeds – You can get updates on specific topics or a list of major headlines, regularly sent to you so you don’t have to visit sites or hunt for new content on a topic. Look for links that contain headings such as these to sign up for news feeds:

• RSS feeds
• News Feeds
• News Alerts
• Table of Contents Alerts