Aspen's Top 5 News Sources for Reporters and Consumers!

Hello fellow Media students! Sometimes research can be agonizing and difficult, but over the last few years I feel like I have come up with some sources that would really help me if I was a true reporter. Depending on what kind of a story I was covering, I would try to stick to only direct sources of information. If my story was a political story, I would use a website like http://www.senate.gov/, where you can view recent floor activity, and all pieces of legislation from previous years. I have used this website before to research a piece of controversial legislation called the DREAM Act, and it really helped! Another great source I have used before is the website http://www.jstor.org/. This website lets you type in keywords and pulls up already published articles from various sources like medical journals, and encyclopedias, and it is a much more reliable source than wikipedia! Another great website like JSTOR is http://www.lexisnexis.com/. On this website you can pull up millions of different documents, and press releases, and it is a very reliable place to start gathering ideas and finding points of reference. Sometimes when you are writing you just need some facts, am I right?! Where better to look than the CIA World Factbook? You can find the website at https://www.cia.gov/index.html. At this website I can find maps, fact, stats, and other vital pieces if info when I am in a crunch. Another great place to start your research is via old news archives. You can find news archives on almost any online News source, for example: http://www.nbcnewsarchives.com. You can use news archives to get a baseline for your research! As a consumer, there are many different sites that I love to get my news from. The first is http://www.cnn.com/. The reason why I love to read CNN is because it you can have immediate access to breaking world news, and not just U.S. news, and I feel like the site is really organized and accurate. As a true Denverite, I love to read the Denver Post, http://www.denverpost.com/. I can keep up on breaking news worldwide as well as news here in Denver! I like to keep up on sports, and my favorite sports website is obviously ESPN, http://espn.go.com/. As a female college student, I like to read a blod called College Candy, http://collegecandy.com/category/buzz/. College Candy lets me keep up with interesting College News, and it is very fun to read. Last but not least, as a consumer, I love to keep up with my music news! I love Rolling Stone! http://www.rollingstone.com/music, it is a great source to use.