17 News - Searching Specific Formats part 1 (Information Research)
Description
This article is from the Information Research FAQ, by David Novak david@spireproject.com with numerous contributions by others.
17 News - Searching Specific Formats part 1 (Information Research)
links and more at http://spireproject.com/newswire.htm
Shakh was invited to travel with the army on the conquest of Nubia. The
Egyptian army was not in need of further soldiers but there was a need
for a witness. Shakh would write the official chronicles of the army's
exploits. He would be expected to send a simple diary on papyrus back
to the palace and then to compose numerous descriptions for memorial
walls. He may also be consulted for paintings on the pharaohs tomb. It
was a fine offer, and he relished in the prospect of increasing his
value exposure.
The war was not swift, nor was it entirely one-sided. In the end,
superior numbers had its effect and Nubia was once again reunited with
Greater Egypt. Reporting was initially a challenge, since very little
happened from day to day. Slowly, Shakh got a handle on the process and
focussed on the grandness of the venture. Two years after floating up
stream, Shakh was able to do his finest work, the parade of captured
soldiers past the Pharaoh's representative.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - -
News articles are typically light and biased. Do not believe a news
item is a great critical analysis of current events. Most news is
produced under time restrictions, for prompt consumption. In research,
news often proves particularly useful for locating information about
individuals or businesses. News is also critical in creating a timeline
of events, in recording events of regional/national/international
importance.
News prepared by individual reporters is collected together by large
news organizations, then delivered to other news organizations around
the world. Your local news organization does not have a reporter in
Iran, but rather buys the story off a newswire, then packages it in
your evening news hour or morning newspaper.
You have probably heard of: United Press International (UPI), Reuters
Global News, Agence France Presse, Associated Press and Xinhua Chinese
Newswire. These very large organizations make their information
available to you in a variety of ways. News collects in commercial
databases of past news, some single source, others, large multi-source
databases. Current news is also packaged into large multi-source
systems delivered by email or newsgroups. Many newswires are available
online free of charge.
Free News
Critical to the changes on the internet is the emergence of free access
to text news. Individual newspapers present news free. Newswires
present news free. News sections to larger sites like Yahoo present
news from many sources, free. News-only search engines will help you
find information from a great many sites with news.
The process of finding current news is about as slick as imaginable.
Here are a few players in the market:
* Yahoo News (www.yahoo.com/headlines/) is leading this field with web
delivery of current news from Reuters, Associated Press, and others.
Yahoo also includes a free search for one week's news.
* Voice of America Newswire (VoA and now voanews.com) delivers news in
English & many other languages.
* The Washington Post (www.washingtonpost.com) offers their own current
news for searching, as well as the Associated Press wire, each searched
separately for the past week.
* Fox News (www.foxnews.com) presents current news online (both current
events and sport news). CNN news (www.cnn.com) is another searchable
site. Both repackage some newswires and present them online. C|news
(www.news.com) does this too.
* Newsbytes (www.newsbytes.com) is a newswire solely on computer
topics, computer, telecom and online world. InternetWire and other
specialty newswires also present news from their website.
* United Nations Radio: The World in Review is one of many news shows
with the transcripts online. Unusually, the Vatican's newswire is not
free online.
* Obviously many more exist - and thankfully we don't need to create a
list or manage the sources. The Spire Project has a clickable map of
English language newspapers. There are definitive lists of global
newspapers like Gary Price's
http://gwis2.circ.gwu.edu/~gprice/newscenter.htm#International
http://dailyearth.com and http://ipl.org/reading/news/
Commercial Resources
The commercial segment of the news market is obviously being squeezed
by the copious quantities of free news online. There are, however,
still some viable markets, principally enterprise solutions (companies
are willing to pay for slight improvements), past database access, and
surprisingly the Wall Street Journal (US$49/yr).
To these markets we have Clarinet and Newspage. World News Connection
is US Government service presenting translated news (quite a gem) as a
searchable database. Unusually, prices start at US$25/7days - yes one
price for the news!
Of course news alerts can be arranged from the commercial news
databases through the database retailers, and each newswire like Agence
France Newswire, Canada Newswire, Xinhua News and Associated Press all
are unique databases, and all stretch back many years. Further
databases like Newswire ASAP and what used to Global Textline are
massive databases of multiple newswires and newspapers. I recall at one
stage Textline had over 4 billion pages.
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