The Internet is rich in sources--sometimes it seems too rich!--but some of the sources below are very helpful in launching searches by journalists. You will find that several of them are linked together as well. Try them out and see what you find.
A Western journalism grad, Duff Wilson of the Seattle Times, maintains an excellent site for fellow journalists. Duff is an investigative reporter for the Times. Check this site for multiple ways to find people and data on the Web.
Bill Dedman is a journalist who specializes in computer-assisted reporting, and conducted a workshop at Western, sponsored by the Associated Press. Dedman's site is valuable not only for C.A.R., but for a host of other journalistic references.
Paul Piper, a librarian with Western's Wilson Library, maintains some excellent sites for journalists, including a comprehensive list of newspapers and search engines on the Web. Check Paul's Journalism Resources page, for more links and information on resources at Wilson Library.
Two good sources for journalism criticism and the latest trends in the industry, as well as ethical discussions, are the Poynter Center and a relatively new organization, the Project for Excellence in Journalism. They also contain a lot of links to other journalism sites.
FACSNET is oriented toward business reporting, but also has some excellent tips for Internet reporters (See Reporting Tools on the menu). This site will lead to commercial news releases and may help develop story ideas in business and industry.
The New York Times site provides a list of web pages that reporters and editors use extensively. You may need to register to use it, but registration is free.
You can link to American Journalism Review which in turn links to a host of other sites, both traditional and new media; or you can link to Columbia Journalism Review, the other major professional publication in the field.
Another set of useful links is also maintained by the Nieman Foundation at Harvard, where mid-career journalists are selected to spend a year rummaging through the best minds in the nation.
The Washington Newspaper Publishers Association (WNPA) maintains a site with Reporters Links to state government, including higher education.
A site that contains a lot of informtion about journalism, including Public Journalism, is the Pew Center. Check out its site for Public Journalism: the Civic Practices Network.
For the First Amendment, and related topics, you should try the Freedom Forum site, operated by the large foundation funded by Gannett money (but it's a good source!). Also good in this area, particularly for the many legal challenges we face, is the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, a nonprofit organization that deals with legal issues at all levels.
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