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Finding and Evaluating News

Guide for FF BUS 122

Finding news online

The purpose of this guide is to help FF BUS 122 and LAW 110 students locate and evaluate news online and through the library. Almost all major news outlets have presences online and in social media. The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post and The Economist, for example, can all be found on the web, Facebook, Twitter and Youtube. Sometimes articles can be accessed for free online, and sometimes they are restricted to subscribers. These news publications, and many others, are indexed in the library’s databases. If an article is restricted to subscribers, you may be able to access the text through one of the databases. 

News databases

The Library provides several news databases. There are databases specifically for the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, and other news sources. Within the databases, you can search by keyword, by headline, or for a specific publication. 

Finding news publications

If you want to find a specific newspaper or news magazine, you can look up the title under the Journals tab on the library home page. Some databases will show you issues by date. This can be useful if you run into an article on the web or in social media that is limited to subscribers. You may be able to get it from one of the databases. Note: sometimes the headlines for online articles are different from the print versions, which are the ones that are indexed in the databases.

Search the Washington Post

Browsing Newspaper articles in a database

Google/Library comparison

Background Information on Current Events

Gale eBooks (Gale Virtual Reference Library) is a collection of specialized encyclopedias. This can be useful for finding background information or definitions related to current events.

CQ Researcher has in-depth coverage of selected major issues such as health, social trends, criminal justice, international affairs, education, the environment, technology, and the economy.