Sources (website)

Last updated

Sources is a web portal for journalists, freelance writers, editors, authors and researchers, focusing especially on human sources: experts and spokespersons who are prepared to answer Reporters' questions or make themselves available for on-air interviews.

Contents

Structure

The Sources website is built around a controlled-vocabulary subject index comprising more than 20,000 topics. This subject index is underpinned by an 'Intelligent Search' system which helps reporters focus their searches by suggesting additional subjects related to their search terms. For example, a search for "cancer" will suggest terms such as "chemotherapy", "melanoma", "oncology", "radiation therapy", "tobacco diseases" and "tumours", as well as topics that actually contain the word "cancer".

Each topic reference links in turn to experts and spokespersons on that topic, with profiles describing their expertise and, where relevant, their approach to the issue, along with their phone numbers and other contact information. Sources includes listings for universities and research institutes, non-profit associations and NGOs, government and public sector bodies, businesses, and individuals including academics, public speakers, and consultants.

The subject index and the search menus are being translated into French, Spanish and German to make Sources more of an international resource.

History

Based in Canada, Sources was founded in 1977 as a print directory for reporters, editors, and story producers. It was first published as a supplement to Content magazine, an influential and controversial magazine of journalism criticism. Content, founded by Dick MacDonald in 1970 and published by Barrie Zwicker after MacDonald's death in 1974, frequently took journalists to task for always relying on the same narrow range of sources representing the same conventional points of view for their stories. Zwicker and MacDonald argued in Content and in their book The News: Inside the Canadian Media [1] that there was a “terrible sameness” in the media's coverage of many important issues, and a shutting out of other, potentially valuable, perspectives and sources of information.

Zwicker decided to do something about the problem, and in summer 1977, Content published its first directory issue, called Sources. Billed as “A Directory of Contacts for Editors and Reporters in Canada”, Sources listed “information officers, public relations officers, media relations and public affairs people, and other contacts for groups, associations, federations, unions, societies, institutions, foundations, industries and companies and federal, provincial and municipal ministries, departments, agencies and boards.” [2]

Explaining the rationale behind Sources, Zwicker said that “It’s a cliché that every story has two sides. An untrue cliché. Most have several. The reporter’s challenge is digging out all sides. Sources can help.” [3] From the beginning, Zwicker saw Sources as a public service as well as a tool for journalists. He said that Sources aimed “to help promote a system of information fairness. Communications resources are equivalent to other basic needs – shelter, food, health care, for example. Everyone should have reasonable access to all.” [4] Therefore, he said “we attempt to provide true diversity: access to people in organizations large and small, for-profit and not-for-profit, from low-tech to high-tech, long-established to just-launched.” [4]

Zwicker told users that “within Sources you will find both mainstream and alternative information. Some may consider alternative as off to one side, not quite up to par, more or less second hand. Here at Sources ‘alternative’ is considered differently, considered as authentic and substantial, even if normally less accessible. The surprises, the jarring notes, the flashes of insight, the ‘odd takes’, the pearls of wisdom, the cries de coeur, the avant garde, tomorrow's news, the prophesies, the unfiltered, the exciting, the elsewhere-squelched, the memorable, the eccentric, the thought-out-at-length, the unmentionable in polite company, the outrageous, the uncensored ... these are what ‘alternative’ media offer. So far as we can, we will include the alternative with Sources. Sources’ driving philosophy is flat-out informational democracy enabled by user-friendly technology. The assumption is that there is a significant fraction of Canadians who want to use and benefit from such an information resource. The assumption is that a significant fraction of Canadians want to expand their search for solutions, and deepen their understandings, rather than chant conventional wisdoms (however freshly minted) to each other." [4]

Separate publications

After a few years, Sources become so big that it could no longer fit into Content (the print directory eventually grew to more than 500 pages), and in 1981 it became an independent publication. Content itself eventually folded, but Zwicker continued to devote a substantial editorial section in Sources to coverage of topics of interest to journalists, ranging from practical topics such as grammar, style, fact-checking, photojournalism, copyright, fees for freelancers and self-publishing, to feature articles on the state of journalism and the media, to book reviews. From the early 1990s, Sources began to feature articles about online research, notably the regular feature 'Dean's Digital World' [5] by informatics expert Dean Tudor.

World Wide Web

Content

Sources went on the Internet in 1995 and has been expanding its online portal ever since. It continues to publish a print edition of the directory, primarily for the benefit of freelancers who use it as a source of story ideas, but is now primarily a Web-based resource.

The Sources website includes not only the Sources directory itself, but a separate government directory, Parliamentary Names & Numbers; a directory of the media, Media Names & Numbers; and The Sources HotLink (www.hotlink.ca), which features articles about media relations and public relations. Also on the site is Fame and Fortune, a directory of awards, prizes, and scholarships available to writers and journalists, and a portal linked into the online archive of Connexions, a library of documents related to alternatives and social justice.

The site also houses Sources Select Resources, [6] a large library of articles and reviews about journalism and the media, spanning a period of more than 30 years.

Controversy

While much of the editorial content has focused on the nitty-gritty of writing, editing and research, Sources has also regularly published articles that have sparked controversy on topics such as censorship and media bias. One campaign waged by Zwicker and others challenged the ethics of journalists accepting free gifts from the people they are supposed to cover. This campaign eventually led Canadian managing editors to agree among themselves that their newspapers would not accept free tickets from travel agencies, resorts, and hotels.

A series of articles by Zwicker on "War, Peace, and the Media" [7] (later collected and published as a booklet) provoked a furor from readers upset by its criticisms of how the media cover U.S. foreign policy. As Zwicker put it in a publisher's letter in the next issue, the "reaction ranged from high praise to angry denunciation." The Toronto Sun newspaper devoted three stories to the series. The columnist Claire Hoy was left "trembling with rage" and the editor Peter Worthington felt "outraged" and a lead editorial denounced Zwicker.

Other controversial articles included one by Wendy Cukier on the public relations battle surrounding proposed gun control legislation, which drew the ire of the gun lobby. [8] Ulli Diemer, who succeeded Zwicker as publisher in 1999, came under attack from the Fraser Institute for his article "Ten Health Care Myths: Understanding Canada’s Medicare Debate”, in which he argued that opponents of public health care were spreading mis-information designed to mislead and frighten the public. [9]

New resources

In keeping with its mandate of encouraging a wide diversity of points of view in the media, Sources has added extra resources over time to help organizations and individuals to be heard. These include a calendar of events open to the media [10] and a news release service which Sources members can use to distribute their statements and communiques via online posting and RSS. The releases are also subject indexed and integrated into the overall search structure for information on the Sources site.

Notes

  1. ↑ MacDonald, Dick; Zwicker, Barrie. The News: Inside the Canadian Media. Deneau. 1982. ISBN   0-88879-053-8
  2. ↑ Sources: A Directory of Contacts for Editors and Reporters in Canada. Content. 1977. ISSN   0045-835X
  3. ↑ Sources 50. 2002. ISBN   0-920299-55-5
  4. 1 2 3 Sources 36. 1995. ISBN   0-920299-24-5
  5. ↑ [Dean's Digital World – http://www.sources.com/SSR/DeansDigital.htm
  6. ↑ Sources Select Resources – http://www.sources.com/SSR.htm
  7. ↑ Zwicker, Barrie. War, Peace and the Media. Sources. 1983, 1985
  8. ↑ Cukier, Wendy. "Anatomy of the Gun Control Debate". Sources. 1996 – http://www.sources.com/SSR/Docs/PNN5-1-GunControl.htm
  9. ↑ Diemer, Ulli. 'Ten Health Care Myths: Understanding Canada’s Medicare Debate’. Sources. 1995. – http://www.diemer.ca/Docs/Diemer-TenHealthCareMyths.htm
  10. ↑ Sources Calendar – http://calendar.sources.com

Related Research Articles

Journalism is the production and distribution of reports on current or past events. The word journalism applies to the occupation, as well as citizen journalists who gather and publish information. Journalistic media include print, television, radio, Internet, and, in the past, newsreels.

Journalist Person who collects, writes and distributes news and similar information

A journalist is a person who collects, writes, or distributes news or other current information to the public. A journalist's work is called journalism.

News media Elements of mass media that focus on delivering news

The news media or news industry are forms of mass media that focus on delivering news to the general public or a target public. These include print media, broadcast news, and more recently the Internet.

Investigative journalism is a form of journalism in which reporters deeply investigate a single topic of interest, such as serious crimes, political corruption, or corporate wrongdoing. An investigative journalist may spend months or years researching and preparing a report. Practitioners sometimes use the terms "watchdog reporting" or "accountability reporting".

Citizen journalism journalism genre

Citizen journalism is based upon public citizens "playing an active role in the process of collecting, reporting, analyzing, and disseminating news and information." Similarly, Courtney C. Radsch defines citizen journalism "as an alternative and activist form of news gathering and reporting that functions outside mainstream media institutions, often as a response to shortcomings in the professional journalistic field, that uses similar journalistic practices but is driven by different objectives and ideals and relies on alternative sources of legitimacy than traditional or mainstream journalism". Jay Rosen offers a simpler definition: "When the people formerly known as the audience employ the press tools they have in their possession to inform one another." The underlying principle of citizen journalism is that ordinary people, not professional journalists, can be the main creators and distributors or news. Citizen journalism should not be confused with: community journalism or civic journalism, both of which are practiced by professional journalists; collaborative journalism, which is the practice of professional and non-professional journalists working together; and social journalism, which denotes a digital publication with a hybrid of professional and non-professional journalism.

Journalistic objectivity is a considerable notion within the discussion of journalistic professionalism. Journalistic objectivity may refer to fairness, disinterestedness, factuality, and nonpartisanship, but most often encompasses all of these qualities. First evolving as a practice in the 18th century, a number of critiques and alternatives to the notion have emerged since, fuelling ongoing and dynamic discourse surrounding the ideal of objectivity in journalism.

Journalistic ethics and standards comprise principles of ethics and good practice applicable to journalists. This subset of media ethics is known as journalism's professional "code of ethics" and the "canons of journalism". The basic codes and canons commonly appear in statements by professional journalism associations and individual print, broadcast, and online news organizations.

Science journalism journalism genre

Science journalism conveys reporting about science to the public. The field typically involves interactions between scientists, journalists, and the public.

Bloomberg News International news agency based in New York City

Bloomberg News is an international news agency headquartered in New York and a division of Bloomberg L.P. Content produced by Bloomberg News is disseminated through Bloomberg Terminals, Bloomberg Television, Bloomberg Radio, Bloomberg Businessweek, Bloomberg Markets, Bloomberg.com and Bloomberg's mobile platforms. Since 2015, John Micklethwait has served as editor-in-chief.

Barrie Wallace Zwicker is a Canadian alternative media journalist, documentary producer, and political activist.

Beat reporting, also known as specialised reporting, is a genre of journalism focused on a particular issue, sector, organisation, or institution over time.

Digital journalism, also known as online journalism, is a contemporary form of journalism where editorial content is distributed via the Internet, as opposed to publishing via print or broadcast. What constitutes digital journalism is debated by scholars; however, the primary product of journalism, which is news and features on current affairs, is presented solely or in combination as text, audio, video, or some interactive forms like newsgames, and disseminated through digital media technology.

A paywall is a method of restricting access to content, especially news, via a purchase or a paid subscription. Beginning in the mid-2010s, newspapers started implementing paywalls on their websites as a way to increase revenue after years of decline in paid print readership and advertising revenue, partly due to the use of ad blockers. In academics, research papers are often subject to a paywall and are available via academic libraries that subscribe.

Collaborative journalism is a growing practice in the field of journalism. One definition is "a cooperative arrangement between two or more news and information organizations, which aims to supplement each organization’s resources and maximize the impact of the content produced." It is practiced by both professional and amateur reporters. It is not to be confused with citizen journalism.

Connexions is the central online library and archive for Canada's movements for social change. The non-profit project also maintains a comprehensive directory of Canadian associations and NGOs.

News Communication of selected information on current events

News is information about current events. This may be provided through many different media: word of mouth, printing, postal systems, broadcasting, electronic communication, or through the testimony of observers and witnesses to events.

Churnalism is a pejorative term for a form of journalism in which press releases, stories provided by news agencies, and other forms of pre-packaged material, instead of reported news, are used to create articles in newspapers and other news media. Its purpose is to reduce cost by reducing original news-gathering and checking sources, to counter revenue lost with the rise of Internet news and decline in advertising; there was a particularly steep fall from late 2015. The origin of the word has been credited to BBC journalist Waseem Zakir.

Robert A. Hackett is a Canadian university professor and researcher. He has been a professor and researcher at the School of Communication in Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada since 1984. His main areas of research include media activism, political communication and news analysis. Since 1993, he has co-directed NewsWatch Canada, a news media monitoring project based at Simon Fraser University.

The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to journalism:

In journalism ethics and media ethics, the term "view from nowhere" refers to a theory about the potential negative effects of neutrality in reporting whereby journalists may disinform their audience by creating the impression that opposing parties to an issue have equal correctness and validity, even when the truth or falsehood of the parties' claims are mutually exclusive and verifiable by a diligent researcher. Media critic and professor of journalism Jay Rosen has been a notable critic of the practice and promoter of the term. Rosen borrowed the term from philosopher Thomas Nagel's 1986 book The View from Nowhere.

References

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.