1. Welcome to SportsJournalists.com, a friendly forum for discussing all things sports and journalism.

    Your voice is missing! You will need to register for a free account to get access to the following site features:
    • Reply to discussions and create your own threads.
    • Access to private conversations with other members.
    • Fewer ads.

    We hope to see you as a part of our community soon!

Searching the Net for a LOCAL news story

Discussion in 'Journalism topics only' started by Simon_Cowbell, Mar 31, 2009.

?

When you hear about a local news story, how do you navigate the Internet to check it out?

  1. Go to my local paper's site, typing in the URL

    29.4%
  2. Go to my local paper's site from a bookmark/favorite place

    41.2%
  3. Put keywords into Google

    23.5%
  4. Put keywords into another search engine

    0 vote(s)
    0.0%
  5. I only watch it on TV without reading any coverage online

    2.9%
  6. I have my local paper Web site up all day and just refresh the page

    2.9%
  1. I Should Coco

    I Should Coco Well-Known Member

    For breaking local news, I check the web sites of one or both of our area's two daily newspapers.

    But Buck's right ... the archive function of both (especially ours) works horribly, unless you search by the byline. And how many people from the general public even notice bylines in today's paper, let alone remember them from years ago.

    My main gripe with Google: usually one of the first options you get is the notoriously unreliable Wikipedia.
     
  2. SF_Express

    SF_Express Active Member

    Simon: My choice was "go to the local paper's site" through a bookmark.

    Then I thought about yesterday. Yesterday, an acquaintance in the town I live him shot himself in the head and killed himself. This was gigantic news in my circle of friends.

    And because there's more than one paper covering this county, my first try was typing his name into Google.

    So I guess I'm saying it depends.
     
  3. J-School Blue

    J-School Blue Member

    God, this is so true.

    You'd think archives would be a newspaper Web site's most valuable tool, but nobody seems interested or able to make an easily searchable database of old stories. It boggles my mind and, yet again, serves to convince me of how half-assed this whole "OMIGOD WEB 1ST!!!!1111" "movement" in newsrooms is.

    Anyhow. I've got all the newspapers I bother to read online bookmarked. A couple of the local TV and radio stations, too. It's sometimes interesting to see what gets national play on Google and Yahoo! and what doesn't, but I certainly don't look for local news there.

    ETA: While I don't use it to read local news, I frequently have much more luck searching up URL links to my old clips via Google than when I try to use the abortions that pass for search engines on my old papers' Web sites.
     
  4. SF_Express

    SF_Express Active Member

    Well, Search Engine Optimization isn't completely lunatic, but this is going too far.

    At my company, it's an important thing, but we've also got ways -- and are going to get more -- to write, for example, one headline that's pretty much solely to maximize its search potential, and a second headline that can be more creative. Same with a "synopsis" field where the "attention getting" words are, while leaving the regular paragraphs of the story the way we want them editorially.

    Fortunately, the search engine people we work with in our company are completely understanding that everything can't be written just for search engines. They just ask us to keep it in mind when we can do it.
     
Draft saved Draft deleted

Share This Page