COM241: Public Relations Writing

This freely available website produced by the Vanderbilt University Libraries provides an alphabetical topical directory to important websites on 100+ current issues. These guide pages typically include sections for: Basic Sites, Government Sites, Indexes and Directories, Interest Groups and Other Political Sites, News and Media Coverage, News and Media Sites, Reference, Research Centers and Other Educational Sites, and Statistics.

Times Topics is a freely available web resource which provides key access by topic to the New York Times, one of the world's most important news sources. Click "Subjects" then browse the topics, for example, "Immigration and Emigration". Each Times Topics page features a chronology as well as archived and current articles from the New York Times, with a box to search by keyword within the topic - for example try typing "Republican Party" to search for republican positions on immigration. Some pages, like this one, also include links to other important web resources and multimedia features from the New York Times. Should you need it, the full-text of all New York Times articles are available through library databases such as ProQuest Newstand.

This very high quality web site, located at Harvard's Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy and sponsored by leading academic journalism programs, guides journalists and other researchers to find scholarly sources related to many of the most important topics in the news. Whenever the source is not available in full-text, use the discovery layer or library A-Z journal list to get library access to the article or to order it on interlibrary loan.

ProPublica is a freely available website produced by a major online non-profit news organization dedicated to in-depth investigative reporting about current issues in the public interest. ProPublica features two kinds of reporting: Investigations, which include a series of in-depth articles about a topic (often between 15 and 30 articles - major topics range from dozens to 100+ articles). MuckReads are shorter reports featuring investigative journalism from other news agencies. Major areas of interest include, among others: healthcare and the health industry, fracking, censorship, money and politics, and financial and economic issues.

Reveal is a freely available website and the online media platform for the Center for Investigative Journalism, a major online non-profit news organization, founded in 1977, and dedicated to in-depth investigative reporting about current issues in the public interest. They publish series of investigative reports on a topic (typically between 10 and 20). Major areas of coverage include: criminal justice, the environment, guns, health care, labor and employment, national security, religion, surveillance and privacy, and veterans.

The Center for Public Integrity is a freely available website produced by a major online non-profit news organization dedicated to in-depth investigative reporting about current issues in the public interest, with a special focus on accountability and fairness, especially in terms of the role and influence of money. Topics featured include politics and elections, national security business, the environment, juvenile justice and health.