[Note to students: This was written in 1997 by grad student Cathleen
Hockman-Wert, and updated in 2000 by grad student Jamie Passaro.]
Are there Web resources for student writers? Are you kidding? The following list is not even remotely comprehensive, but highlights some of the best picks out there. Note that the categories overlap quite a bit; in this list the Web sites are classified according to what may be their greatest strengths for student users.
A great resource for professionals
and students alike: www.journaliststoolbox.com
(Also at:
www.geocities.com/mike_reilley_2000/newswriting/onlineindex.html)
The free site features more than 2,900 links helpful to professional journalists, students and instructors. Links are organized by beats and are updated regularly. Other resources:
BEATS: federal government, state government, politics, business, sports, entertainment, Internet/tech, investigative, education, crime, legal, medical/health, science, environment, public safety, religion, agriculture, military, labor issues, school violence, weather, diversity.
WEB TOOLS: search engines/subject directories/Weblogs, phone/e-mail directories, finding expert sources, general research, history, domain search tools, listserves, public records, daily news sites, spreadsheets, writing with numbers, history, online press releases.
TOPICS: writing, copy editing, design/visual journalism, photojournalism, broadcasting, news industry/journalism organizations, media ethics, global journalism, teaching tools, high school and college journalism, columnists, advertising/marketing, PR.
JOB-HUNTING: Journalism Jobs (more than 60 links), A Journalist's Guide to Writing Cover Letters and Resumes, tips from recruiters on interviews, clips, broadcast tapes and more.
P.S. Should www.journaliststoolbox.com
be down, try the direct URL at
www.geocities.com/mike_reilley_2000/newswriting/onlineindex.html
If you keep only one bookmark to a writing Web site, the American Journalism Review homepage (http://www.newslink.org/) would be a strong candidate. The AJR page has links to just about everything, including 4,000+ newspapers and magazines, wire services, journalism organizations, and much more.
AJR’s Top 10 List offers a good introduction to on-line news publications. You’ll find things like: the New York Times (which doesn’t charge U.S. residents for use, although registration is required) (http://www.nytimes.com/). Other links include:
CNN Interactive (http://www.cnn.com/).
USA Today (http//www.usatoday.com) which, among other publications even has an on-line crossword puzzle
Time (http://www.time.com/time/),
the Wall Street Journal (http://wsj.com/), and
the Christian Science Monitor (http//www.csmonitor.com/) CSM has a searchable index of all its articles since 1980.
Links to journalism publications include:
Copy Editor (http://www.copyeditor.com/), which features jobs for copy editors and other links
Columbia Journalism Review (http//www.cjr.org/), which features such departments as Who Owns What, a guide to what the major media companies own, and The Language Corner, a column about word usage (There's an archive of dozens of past columns on everything from antecedents to the use of who and whom.)
Advertising Age (http//www.adage.com/)
AJR is also a helpful source of links to statistics on the Internet (including American Demographics, Bureau of the Census, Gallup, Statistical Abstract of the United States). Feeling overwhelmed by all of this information? AJR offers a link to a Journalist's Guide to Web Searches.
Another good source for up-to-the-minute national and world news is the Associated Press (http://www.ap.org/)
Three good sites for Oregon news are: The Oregonian, Portland's daily newspaper (http://www.oregonian.com/); The Register-Guard, Eugene's daily newspaper, updated hourly (http://www.registerguard.com/); and The Oregon Daily Emerald, UO's daily student newspaper (http://www.dailyemerald.com/texis/scripts/vnews/newspaper) The Emerald site has archived stories dating back to 1995.
Another great place to conduct research is the UO library's Janus online information system (http://libweb.uoregon.edu/). This site has links to the library's catalog, as well as indexes and abstracts from hundreds of journals, magazines, and newspapers.
Job-hunters can turn to AJR’s JobLink (http://www.newslink.org/joblink.html), which allows you to search by specialty (reporter, copy editor, etc.) medium (magazines, public relations, etc.) region of the United States, and experience.
Don’t stop your job hunt at AJR. You might also check J-Jobs from the University of California at Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism (http://www.journalism.berkeley.edu/jobs/).
Another good possibility is the National Diversity Journalism Job Bank (http://newsjobs.com/) sponsored by, among others, the Florida Times-Union and the Newspaper Association of America.
Editor & Publisher Interactive (http://www.mediainfo.com/) claims it has a "reputation as the leading marketplace for newspaper jobs." E&P Interactive Classifies includes jobs in "New Media" and is updated weekly.
On-line writing labs
But before worrying about the job thing, we gotta get through J-school. When in need, fly to an OWL: an On-line Writing Lab. Dozens of universities have them. And fortunately, they’re willing to share their resources. OWLs offer pages of tips on every imaginable aspect of writing. Some have quiz sheets so you can practice using correct punctuation and grammar. Some have on-line tutors. Almost all include lists of links to other OWLs and Web writing resources. Here’s just a sample.
The Purdue University Writing Lab (http://owl.english.purdue.edu/) is the most famous OWL, and for good reason: it has zillions of handouts with detailed information.. "Troublesome verbs" is just one of dozens of handouts in the grammar section. At Purdue you’ll find one of the best selections of interactive exercises around, plus links to MLA style handouts. Note the particularly helpful pages on paraphrasing , proofreading strategies, and how to use statistics responsibly.
Rensselaer (Polytechnic Institute) Writing Center (http://www.rpi.edu/web/writingcenter/online.html) has lots of good handouts, too, including an especially good one on "Suggestions for Revising Prose," a checklist to help make your writing more interesting. Also worth noting are Rensselaer's essays on developing a thesis.
The HyperGrammar site at the University of Ottawa (http://www.ottawa.ca/academic/arts/writcent/hypregrammar/) is also strong along the "how to develop a thesis and outline" lines (the bilingual English/French version may be handy to some). Many of their pages were written with academic papers in mind, but most of the points apply equally well to good journalism.
The Texas A & M Writing Center (http://www-english.tamu.edu/wcenter/) offers a detailed step-by-step guide, beginning with composing a thesis and continuing through polishing. You can also submit writing questions to online consultants through a form.
Jack Lynch’s writing page from Rutgers University (http://andromeda.rutgers.edu/~jlynch/Writing/links.html) has an eclectic list of Resources for Writers and Writing Instructors. Among scarier things which remain nameless, you’ll find a link to the Gender-Free Pronoun FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) page (http://www.aetherlumina.com/gnp/), which looks like someone’s thesis, and the lyrics of Schoolhouse Rock ("Conjunction Junction," along with other classics) (http://www.apolcalypse.org/pub/u/gilly/Schoolhouse_Rock/HTML/grammar/grammar.html).
Tutors at owls
The Online Writery of the University of Missouri (http://www.missouri.edu/~wleric/writery.html) not only has a goal of cybertutor response within 24 hours of request – it also hosts ZooMoo: a multi-user dungeon, Object Oriented. Through ZooMoo you can converse in real time with whoever else is on-line. For more information about MOOs, refer back to the National Writing Centers Association.
Copy editing
The Bill Walsh Copy Editor’s Page (http://www.theslot.com/), by a long-time professional, is definitely worth looking at. His "Curmudgeon’s Stylebook" is designed as a supplement to the Associated Press Stylebook, with discussion of everything from proper usage of "baloney" (exaggerated talk) versus "bologna" (the lunchmeat) to a section on "Matters of Sensitivity," which addresses using "African-American" versus "black," etc. If you have a question and your AP Stylebook doesn’t help, this is the place to check. That’s no baloney.
Copy Editing for Magazines (http://www.well.com/user/mmcadams/copy.editing.html), a course homepage by Mindy McAdams (former copy editor at Time magazine and the Washington Post), includes a resource list, copy editing quizzes, and links to reference books and Web sites related to editing. A helpful guide to vocabulary for copy-editors (what the heck is a predicate nominative anyway?) can be found under Words About Words.
Communication research
Editor & Publisher Interactive (http://www.mediainfo.com/) is among the on-line publications that have good information related to cyberjournalism. A recent issue included articles called "Are the Days of Innovation Waning for Online News?" and "Cliffhanger Election Fuels Web Traffic."
The Editorial Eye magazine (http://www.eei-alex.com/eye/) is a 12-page monthly newsletter originating in Alexandria, Va.
Graduate students in particular will appreciate some of the resources related to communications scholarship from the Undergraduate Writing Center at the University of Texas at Austin (http://www.utexas.edu/depts/uwc/.html/writing.html). They offer handouts on media history, theory, and methodology.
Reference desk
Reference must-have’s include:
Strunk’s classic guide, The Elements of Style (http://www.bartleby.com/141/) and the searchable Merriam-Webster’s WWWebster Dictionary (http://www.m-w.com/dictionary), 10th edition.
You can also search a 1911 Roget’s Thesaurus (http://humanities.uchicago.edu/forms_unrest/ROGET.html) or look up quotes from Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations (1901 version, but hey, it’s handy) (http://www.cc.columbia.edu/acis/bartleby/bartlett/).
For more than 300 links to full-text "Classic Works" of fiction, drama, and poetry, go to John Hewitt’s Writer’s Resource Center (http://www.poewar.com).
The Electronic Text Collection at the University of Virginia (http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/english.html) also has links to works of classic literature, philosophy, and poetry on-line, including searchable electronic text versions of the King James Bible and the Koran.
Bulletin boards, listservs, and e-mail, oh my!
If you’re ever interested in listening in or joining discussion among other writers, AJR isn’t a bad place to look for listservs. If you're searching for discussion or advice regarding a particular journalism profession, go to The Reporters Network (http://www.reporters.net/), which claims to have the most comprehensive e-mail directory of journalists, editors, producers, and freelance writers available on the Internet.
Miscellaneous
Check in with the Society of Professional Journalists (http://town.hall.org/places/spj/) for information on this organization, to see its code of ethics, and for a good list of links to resources on freedom of information issues. The link to the SPJ publication, Quill, only brings up lists of story titles, not the full-text articles themselves.
The UO's literary nonfiction program site is your guide to the genre (http://lnf.uoregon.edu). The site includes student work, interviews with famous writers, suggested reading, and links to other sites for writers.
Online magazines
Salon.com (http://www.salon.com/) updated daily, offers everything from breaking news to book reviews to arts and entertainment coverage to thoughtful essays on motherhood.
Slate (http://slate.msn.com/) similar to Salon, offers more in-depth political coverage.
inFlux (http://influx.uoregon.edu) is the online version of the UO journalism department's award-winning magazine.
Explore and enjoy!