41 News as a Source
Teaching & Learning, University Libraries and Christina Frasier
Learning Objectives
- Understand how news sources can provide valuable information soon after an event.
- Recognize the limitations of news items as sources for academic writing.
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 what your research question is.
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.
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 going 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
- Your need 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 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, Reddit, and personal blogs.
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.
News Databases – Search current, recent, and historical newspaper content in databases provided free by libraries. OSU Libraries offers 69 news databases to students, staff, and faculty. They include:
- LexisNexis Academic – contains news back to 1980 from newspapers, broadcast transcripts, wire services, blogs, and more.
- Proquest Historical Newspapers – contains older content from several major U.S. newspapers.
- Newsbank – contains articles from thousands of national and international newspapers.
Social Media – Most of the news outlets listed above contribute to Twitter and Facebook. It’s customary for highly condensed announcements in this venue to lead you back to the news outlet’s website for more information. However, how credible tech companies such as Facebook, Twitter, and Google are with news is uncertain.
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. However, blogs’ personal nature also should make readers question the credibility of these sources.
Citizen Journalism – A growing number of sites 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. The people who do this are often referred to as citizen journalists. Citizen journalists share material on social media.
Choosing & Using Sources: A Guide to Academic Research, Teaching & Learning University Libraries, CC BY 4.0