Sources (website)
Encyclopedia
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 interview
s.
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”, and 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.
Zwicker decided to do something about the problem, and in the Summer of 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.”
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.” From the beginning, Zwicker saw Sources as a public service as well as a tool for journalists. He said that Sources should “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.” 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.”
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.”
, 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 on Sources began to feature articles about online research, notably the regular feature ‘Dean’s Digital World’ by informatics expert Dean Tudor.
The Sources website includes not on 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 (Information Sharing Services), a library of documents related to alternatives and social justice.
The site also houses Sources Select Resources, a large library of articles and reviews about journalism and the media, spanning a period of more than 30 years.
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” (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. Columnist Claire Hoy was left “trembling with rage “, 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. 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.
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.
Web portal
A web portal or links page is a web site that functions as a point of access to information in the World Wide Web. A portal presents information from diverse sources in a unified way....
for journalists, freelance writers, editors
Editing
Editing is the process of selecting and preparing written, visual, audible, and film media used to convey information through the processes of correction, condensation, organization, and other modifications performed with an intention of producing a correct, consistent, accurate, and complete...
, 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 interview
Interview
An interview is a conversation between two people where questions are asked by the interviewer to obtain information from the interviewee.- Interview as a Method for Qualitative Research:"Definition" -...
s.
Structure
The Sources website www.sources.com is built around a controlled-vocabularyControlled vocabulary
Controlled vocabularies provide a way to organize knowledge for subsequent retrieval. They are used in subject indexing schemes, subject headings, thesauri, taxonomies and other form of knowledge organization systems...
subject index comprising more than 20,000 topics. This subject index
Subject indexing
Subject indexing is the act of describing or classifying a document by index terms or other symbols in order to indicate what the document is about, to summarize its content or to increase its findability. In other words, it is about identifying and describing the subject of documents...
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”, and 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.
Print supplement
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” 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 the Summer of 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.”
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.” From the beginning, Zwicker saw Sources as a public service as well as a tool for journalists. He said that Sources should “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.” 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.”
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.”
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 grammarGrammar
In linguistics, grammar is the set of structural rules that govern the composition of clauses, phrases, and words in any given natural language. The term refers also to the study of such rules, and this field includes morphology, syntax, and phonology, often complemented by phonetics, semantics,...
, style, fact-checking, photojournalism
Photojournalism
Photojournalism is a particular form of journalism that creates images in order to tell a news story. It is now usually understood to refer only to still images, but in some cases the term also refers to video used in broadcast journalism...
, copyright
Copyright
Copyright is a legal concept, enacted by most governments, giving the creator of an original work exclusive rights to it, usually for a limited time...
, fees for freelancers, and self-publishing
Self-publishing
Self-publishing is the publication of any book or other media by the author of the work, without the involvement of an established third-party publisher. The author is responsible and in control of entire process including design , formats, price, distribution, marketing & PR...
, to feature articles on the state of journalism and the media, to book reviews. From the early 1990s on Sources began to feature articles about online research, notably the regular feature ‘Dean’s Digital World’ by informatics expert Dean Tudor.
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 on 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
Media relations
Media relations involves working with various media for the purpose of informing the public of an organization's mission, policies and practices in a positive, consistent and credible manner. Typically, this means coordinating directly with the people responsible for producing the news and features...
and public relations
Public relations
Public relations is the actions of a corporation, store, government, individual, etc., in promoting goodwill between itself and the public, the community, employees, customers, etc....
. 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 (Information Sharing Services), a library of documents related to alternatives and social justice.
The site also houses Sources Select Resources, 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 censorshipCensorship
thumb|[[Book burning]] following the [[1973 Chilean coup d'état|1973 coup]] that installed the [[Military government of Chile |Pinochet regime]] in Chile...
and media bias
Media bias
Media bias refers to the bias of journalists and news producers within the mass media in the selection of events and stories that are reported and how they are covered. The term "media bias" implies a pervasive or widespread bias contravening the standards of journalism, rather than the...
. 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” (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
Toronto Sun
The Toronto Sun is an English-language daily tabloid newspaper published in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It is known for its daily Sunshine Girl feature and for what it sees as a populist conservative editorial stance.-History:...
newspaper devoted three stories to the series. Columnist Claire Hoy was left “trembling with rage “, editor Peter Worthington
Peter Worthington
Peter Worthington is a Canadian journalist. A foreign correspondent with the Toronto Telegram newspaper from 1956, Worthington was an eyewitness to the murder of Lee Harvey Oswald in 1963, and can be seen in photographs of the event. He remained with the Telegram until it folded in 1971...
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
Gun politics in Canada
Gun politics in Canada is largely polarized between two groups with opposing views. One group includes those who object to the registration of personal firearms...
legislation, which drew the ire of the gun lobby. Ulli Diemer, who succeeded Zwicker as publisher in 1999, came under attack from the Fraser Institute
Fraser Institute
The Fraser Institute is a Canadian think tank. It has been described as politically conservative and right-wing libertarian and espouses free market principles...
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
Misinformation
Misinformation is false or inaccurate information that is spread unintentionally. It is distinguished from disinformation by motive in that misinformation is simply erroneous, while disinformation, in contrast, is intended to mislead....
designed to mislead and frighten the public.
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 get heard. These include a calendar of events open to the media and a news releaseNews release
A press release, news release, media release, press statement or video release is a written or recorded communication directed at members of the news media for the purpose of announcing something ostensibly newsworthy...
service which Sources members can use to distribute their statements and communiques via online posting and RSS
RSS
-Mathematics:* Root-sum-square, the square root of the sum of the squares of the elements of a data set* Residual sum of squares in statistics-Technology:* RSS , "Really Simple Syndication" or "Rich Site Summary", a family of web feed formats...
. The releases are also subject indexed and integrated into the overall search structure for information on the Sources site.