230.106 Education in the Media

This guide is intended for students in Freshman Seminar:  Education in the Media.  Students with additional questions should feel free to contact Ellen Keith, Librarian for Sociology.

Please note that the database links and many other links in this guide will require you to set up remote access if you are connecting from off-campus.  You do not need to do anything if you are using a computer on campus.

Searching newspapers

Although many newspapers have their own websites, like The New York Times and The Washington Post, these sites aren't the first place to go if you are tracking content over time.  When it comes to their archives, they want you to pay for that content.  One of the great things about having access to a research library like the Eisenhower Library is that you should never have to pay for information!  The Library subscribes to over 500 databases so information is both plentiful and free to you as students. 

For both back issues and current content of newspapers, Lexis Nexis Academic is the best place to start:

LexisNexis Academic New Interface  (All US JHU)

Within Lexis Nexis, you can search either across major papers or papers by region for a particular subject, or search a single paper for your subject.  To search for a single newspaper, start at the Sources list.  Search for your paper and you can get information about that title and also search that title.

Searching tips

Library databases offer many more searching tips than free websites.  Some search strategies specific to Lexis Nexis:

• Date limits:  you can limit by specific dates, i.e., 9/1/07 to 9/30/07 or time span, i.e., the last six months
• You can use truncation symbols to find variations of words.  Use an exclamation point to find all forms of the word "school" so school!  finds school or schools or schooling.  Use an asterisk to replace a letter in a word.  Wom*n finds both woman and women.
• Boolean logic:  use OR to get results that have either of the terms you're searching as in "education OR school!"  Use AND to find results that have both terms, "school! AND grades."
• Note the search fields.  You can search by headline or full-text, among other options.  Headline means your search terms MUST be in the headline while full-text means they can be anywhere in the text of the article.  If you don't find what you're looking for with a headline search, change the search field to full-text.

What's not in Lexis Nexis

• No images, charts, graphs, or pictures.
• Less sense of where the article appeared in the paper, which is often an indication of importance and visibility.  Pay close attention to the citation information.  Is this article on the first page of the first section or deeper in the paper?

Finding information on newspapers

You'll want to ask certain questions about the paper you're searching and you'll use various resources to find that information.

Use Gale Directory of Publications and Broadcast Media (Gen Ref Z6951. A97 2005) for circulation figures, frequency, and personnel.

Use D&B Million Dollar Database (for U.S. and Canadian companies) and Disclosure (for companies publicly traded on U.S. exchanges) for information on the newspaper owners.

Dun & Bradstreet  (All JHU (incl. International))

Disclosure corporate snapshots  (All JHU (incl. International))

Questions to ask about newspaper owners

• How many newspapers does this company own?
• How many media outlets
• Is it private or public?  Are there stockholders to answer to?
• Does the company own businesses beyond newspapers?

Census information

Please see the Census Basics page from Government Publications, Maps, and Law for helpful information on accessing census data.