ABSTRACT
Reporters and their editors and producers form a creative, determined information-gathering team when it comes to finding sources and facts for a news story. The register regularly uses a wide range of other online services that includes the basics for online information access, such as America online and the World Wide Web. But the newspaper’s reporters and news researchers often also use numerous advanced online tools. They include Lexis/Nexis (news media and legal databases), DataTimes (news media), Dialog (scientific and other specialized databases), Westlaw (legal databases), and PACER (a federal courts service). For some reporters, editors, and news librarians, online information gathering is the single most important change in news story background research since clip files were first developed. A large proportion of online information is available through commercial services. These businesses acquire their information from government and other nonpublic sources or create databases on their own.
