My company's quarterly newsletter is an important resource to us. It is compiled by a 92-year old legend in Napa, where we are located, from local articles about the economy of our area. He does this on a volunteer basis, which saves us a lot of money (obviously).
Trouble is, though he is a tough and healthy old guy, he is 92. Rather than be caught unprepared for the inevitable, I'm researching News Clipping services that could help us sift through info to get us the targeted info we need. I'm trying Google Alerts, but most of the services on the web only cover what is actually posted on the web. Some of the articles that he gleans for us are small stories that might not make it to the web.
So I'm asking Hatrack's collective consciousness:
Do you use any news services, web or otherwise?
What do you think of your service?
Any tricks to pass on?
Thanks.
Posted by xnera (Member # 187) on :
I worked in the PR department of my college for a semester. One of my responsibilities was to sort through the news clippings and paste the good ones in a book. It was fun! These were actual clippings, and each had a white identifier tag attached. Sometimes the tag was bigger than the clipping.
That was eight years ago, so I don't recall the name of the service offhand, but I would recognize it if I heard it. I thought they were pretty good. Lots of repeats if it was an AP story, though, and sometimes there'd be exact duplicates. I'm guessing that we just had the service clip any article that mentioned our university's name; which seems pretty straightforward; I'm not sure how it would work if you were looking for a variety of topics, but I'm betting the services have lots of experience handling it.
Um, I guess I don't have much advice. I just have fond memories of working with the clippings.
Posted by eslaine (Member # 5433) on :
Naw, feedback is good. Posted by fugu13 (Member # 2859) on :
Part of the problem is, of course, that local articles are based on one of those discriminations the internet does not pay much attention to -- physical geography.
As of right now, I know of (at the very least) no free service that offers locality-based discrimination on a broad scale; your best bet is to find other local groups doing the same thing (chamber of commerce might be a good place to start looking), and either borrow their efforts (possibly at a price) or combine efforts.
Posted by eslaine (Member # 5433) on :
Good idea, but that's us....
Posted by advice for robots (Member # 2544) on :
I worked for a clipping service for a few months. We sat there and scanned newspapers and publications for names and references to products. Each time we found one we'd enter the name and see if it was in the database. A lot of that work was based on hunches and practice. I wasn't there long enough to get very good at it.
Posted by fugu13 (Member # 2859) on :
If almost all news about the local economy is going to appear in a small number of newspapers, might work with them. Its far better to tag stuff at the source rather than later.
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