Finding Information: Step Three E
Finding Specific Kinds of Sources: Finding News Sources
Using Newspaper Sources:
Information from newspapers can be very useful if you remember a few basic facts. The main purpose of a newspaper (other than the comics and crossword puzzle) is to inform you of current up to the minute events and occurrences. We read a newspaper on a daily basis to learn what is happening around the world, nation, state, and our own municipality.
Using Newspapers:
- Current information:
- Articles report the facts surrounding an event as it occurs
- Can be used to trace the development of an event over time
- Editorials/opinion pieces show how others see the event and its impact
- Other sections such as sports, leisure, arts, business, and classifieds give a picture of the culture or society and what else is considered important or newsworthy.
- Historical Research:
- Provide the facts of an event as well as a picture of what was considered important at the time. How would these events be covered in the press today? Ask yourself how Franklin Roosevelt's presidency was reported at the time and how today's press would write about his terms in office.
- Can be used to compare the depiction of an event in other sources such as books or articles.
- Editorials/opinion pieces show how the events were viewed at the time.
- Other sections give you insight into the culture. For example, how did sports reporters cover Jackie Robinson's first year in baseball as compared to his last?
- Types:
- General Daily: New York Times, Washington Post, Tulsa World
- Business: Wall St. Journal, Barrons
- Entertainment: Variety
- Fashion: WWD:Women's Wear Daily
- Finding Newspapers: Most major newspapers are available every day on the Internet. It is easy and usually free to subscribe to a major newspaper from another city on the web.
If you are looking for newspaper articles on specific topics, however, you will need to use an index. Some papers have web sites which allow you to search their archives, but you may not be able to get the full-text of the article without paying for it. Other newspapers are indexed by commercial vendors and access to their files is not free. Some of these include full text of the article as well as an index. Many libraries purchase licenses to these commercial products. At the OSU Library, newspapers can be searched
by using a number of resources. Some of these are: Factiva, 
National Newspaper Index, the Daily Oklahoman, the Daily Oklahoman Archive, and the Tulsa World.
IMPORTANT NEWSPAPER FACT!!
Newspaper articles are not research. To an extent, they are written to sell papers as much as to impart news. A newspaper may have a particular political slant and articles may be written to support a specific point of view. Information gleaned from newspapers should always be verified in another source.
