Posted on 10/22/2001 7:37:08 AM PDT by YosemiteMarmite
+ News Portals and Search Engines
As vital as general-purpose search engines and web directories are to helping us navigate the web, they aren't the best tools for searching for news. This isn't a criticism -- they simply aren't designed for the purpose.
A much better way to find news on the web is to use a specialized news portal or search engine. Here are a few of the best.
- News Portals
Yahoo! News Full Coverage
http://fullcoverage.yahoo.com/
With something called "Full Coverage" you expect a lot, and Yahoo! delivers. Full Coverage is maintained by human editors just like the Yahoo! directory, and is updated with links to new stories throughout each day. News is organized into categories, and each category has links to news stories, related web sites, magazine articles, opinions and editorials, audio and video, and links to Yahoo! directory categories.
While many of the links point to coverage by major news organizations, links to other sources abound, including some very obscure or out of the ordinary resources, but all very high quality. Pursuing a Yahoo! Full Coverage category is an excellent way to get a very broad, yet deep overview of a particular news event.
HeadlineSpot
http://www.headlinespot.com/
HeadlineSpot is a "true" news portal in the sense that it has links to hundreds of sources of news and information, organized in categories. Major categories include news by subject, news by region, media type, opinion pages, and so on.
Other categories point to resources helpful to news junkies. These include links to "cool tools," resources for journalists, kids and teachers, and a category that takes you "behind the news."
NewsCenter
http://gwis2.circ.gwu.edu/~gprice/newscenter.htm
NewsCenter, maintained by colleague and expert online sleuth Gary Price, is designed to help you locate and quickly access a wide variety of online news resources. From news wires to front sections of major papers to international news to government press releases, you'll likely find the link you're looking for on this page. Tip: Use your browser's "find" function (usually Ctrl-F on the keyboard) to search for a specific news source once the page has loaded.
Gary also maintains two other pages of interest to newshounds: "Current Awareness" resources using streaming media such as audio and video, and a Speech and Transcript center where you can access the words of newsmakers verbatim.
Current Awareness Resources Using Streaming Media
http://gwis2.circ.gwu.edu/~gprice/audio.htm
Speech and Transcript Center
http://gwis2.circ.gwu.edu/~gprice/speech.htm
AILEENA
http://www.aileena.ch/
Aileena contains over 5,500 Links to newspapers, radio and TV Stations in 174 countries.
NewsDirectory
http://www.newsdirectory.com/
Easy access to thousands of news sources, including more than 3,600 newspapers, 4,800 magazines and hundreds of television stations worldwide.
NewsTrawler
http://www.newstrawler.com/
NewsTrawler is a meta search engine that lets you search the archives of hundreds of news archives on the web.
- Search Engine News Services
Though they don't generally include news stories in their indexes, the general purpose search engines do offer separate news services. These range from simple repackaging of headlines from Moreover, to extensive, near real-time news search capabilities. Among these offerings, Northern Light's Current News Search stands head and shoulders above the others.
AltaVista News
http://news.altavista.com/
A bare-bones news offering, powered by Moreover.com.
Excite NewsTracker
http://nt.excite.com/
News Tracker allows you to create your own customized news links. Create topics using keywords, and NewsTracker will search from hundreds of sources and display all of the news it can find relating to your topic.
Lycos News
http://news.lycos.com/
Lycos News combines news from Wired with headlines from Reuters and the Associated Press.
Google News and Resources
http://www.google.com/news/
Google's News and Resources is a simple list of links to major news and information sites around the world.
Northern Light Current News
http://www.northernlight.com/news.html
Current News provides a search of the past 2 weeks of news stories from over 70 sources from 33 newswires and online publications, including AP Online, UPI, and PR Newswire, as well as numerous international sources.
You can also easily limit your search by recency (last two hours, today, or the past two weeks), topic (14 categories ranging from "Business" to "Weather Conditions") and sort your results by time or relevance.
By Chris Sherman
Associate Editor, Search Engine Watch
http://searchenginewatch.com/
Copyright (c) 2001 INT Media Group, Inc.
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