CONTENTS:

• NewspaperLinks
• US Newspaper List (USNPL)
• NewsLink

NEWSPAPERLINKS

First up is NewspaperLinks, A Gateway to Your Local Newspaper.

And so it is.

"This site is a service of the Newspaper Association of America, a nonprofit organization representing the $59-billion newspaper industry and more than 2,000 newspapers in the U.S. and Canada."

From the home page, select from the drop-down menus found on the left of the page. The first menu opts for U.S. Daily and Weekly as the default, but you can limit your search to either a daily or a weekly. Other choices from this menu include Canadian or International papers, College Newspapers, Archives, Newspaper Groups, Associations and Media Organizations.

The next menu lets you pick the section you want to read first – just like the hard copy version. Pick from the Home Page (the default choice), Sports, Classifieds, City Guide and the like. The last drop-down menu lets you select by State or All States. Finally, you can search by the newspaper name or city from a handy dialog box.

Also, on the home page, NewspaperLinks spotlights a feature story from the wide range of newspapers.

http://www.Newspaperlinks.com/home.cfm

US NEWSPAPER LIST (USNPL)

USNPL is more than newspapers. Also, find links for Radio, Television, Magazines, even College zines.

USNPL provides a simple Site Search Engine: Search by text, opt for Boolean AND or OR, Case Sensitive or not. In the search dialog box, I entered the name of the town in which I grew up. A search for my roots garnered three hits, a selection of papers from three different states. I clicked on my state of choice and was taken to a long list of online papers for that particular state. With this site, your browser's "find" function comes in handy.

The USNPL home page is indexed by state. Rather than use the simple search engine, just pick a state and browse. Toward the bottom of the page, find a selection of resource tools like Maps, Weather, phone books, stock quotes, national news and more papers that don't fall into a state category (including a link to itself, hmmm).

http://www.usnpl.com/

NEWSLINK

Of course, I have to add an oldie but a goodie here, NewsLink. Once under the purview of the American Journalism Review (http://ajr.org), NewsLink now runs its own Web site.

Find Top Sites, Newspapers, Magazines, Radio/TV, Resources. Limit your search for U.S. newspapers By State, National Papers, Major metros, Dailies and Non-dailies. Or select the Most-linked-to By state or By type. Other choices include Business, Alternative, Specialty and Campus. Also, pick by state a TV or radio station. Select More Options to find other delimiters for your search.

If you don't want to go through all that to find local news sources and you know where you want to go, use the dialog box to search by city, state and news type (All, Newspaper, TV or Radio). I entered the name of small-town USA, where I was raised, and, before I could blink, I arrived at the hometown home page.

Wait, there are more choices. Select news sources for the Americas, Other countries (indexed by regions, including Oceana) and Magazines.

Explore Newslink. It has a lot to offer to a researcher trying to find a news source for a prospect. You know, the one that lives in that town you never heard of before now. Or use the site to find a home page for a new research resource.

http://www.newslink.org/

Pamela J. Smith