How do I scoop the news?

February 20, 2010 12:18 PM

How do I find pre-news information about topics for my website, either via research papers on the subject, or by press release?

I run a small website/blog about a very specific topic. I have a section where I repost the news I find, and in doing so I realized that a lot of the news I find is based off of research papers and press releases from institutions. But, what I notices is sometimes the articles are weeks or months after the press release or paper was released. Because the topic isn't very hot (its generally filler news on slow days) I wonder if the information is there and just not utilized until needed. I'm trying to figure out, is there a way I can monitor something and see the papers or press releases and instead of just taking what I find from other news organizations, take it directly from the sources before the news organizations get it. Since it can come from papers and institutions all over the world, there isn't a single point of contact on the subject (that I know.)

posted by [insert clever name here] to media & arts (6 answers total)

You can create an RSS feed of Google search results, which will be automatically updated when a new page matching your search appears. You can set up a similar feed for pubmed, if your specific topic is a biomedical one.

What is your specific topic? It may help provide a more useful answer.
posted by James Scott-Brown at 1:05 PM on February 20, 2010 [1 favorite]

Faster way to create a google search feed (of the top 10 search results): go here, and replace "lemurs" with whatever search you want to watch.
posted by James Scott-Brown at 1:10 PM on February 20, 2010

Do the research papers come from scholarly journals? Many have RSS feeds, subscribing to those might even get you notice of pre-prints. For example, here is the Journal of Oceanography (guessing your general area of interest from the website linked in your profile). Some databases also have saved search alerts that will email you lists of new papers. If you have access to a library at all, just ask a librarian which of their databases are relevant and have such a service.
posted by donnagirl at 3:15 PM on February 20, 2010

Donnagirls got the topics figured out. I am looking for information specifically on seahorses, pipefish and sea dragons; the whole sygnathiformes order, actually. I have RSS on google news, I didn't know about the search results. Though, looking at the lemurs link, it looks just like my news feed. Am I misunderstanding?

Yes, much of the work is from scholarly journals. I didn't think to check for RSS feeds on the journals themselves...

Any ideas about press releases? How are they usually released? Assuming (and perhaps I shouldn't) that different institutions don't have rss feeds for that kind of thing, should I contact organizations I know to work with sygnathids and ask to be on a list when they put out a press release? Is that how its done?
posted by [insert clever name here] at 5:38 PM on February 20, 2010

I would think that most significantly-sized research institutions that issue press releases also have an RSS for recent news. For example, here are feed links for the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute. Research universities have news outlets, too, and they usually offer some sort of feed.
posted by donnagirl at 5:59 PM on February 20, 2010

It turns the "faster way" I suggested is actually different: it creates a feeds based upon Google News, whereas the first link described Google Alerts, which includes other sites indexed by Google but not included on Google News. If you create a feed with each service, using an identical keyword, you will see that they include different stories.
posted by James Scott-Brown at 1:05 PM on February 21, 2010