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How to Use and Evaluate News & Opinion Magazines
PURPOSE OF NEWS AND OPINION MAGAZINES
When writing a research paper on news, political, and social events, your library search will yield many citations from news and opinion magazines, the most popular ones being the weekly-produced Time, Newsweek, and U. S. News and World Report. These sources are appropriate to help you formulate an argument on your topic. At the bottom of this guide is a chart of news and opinion magazines, the editorial stance of each, the databases that index each, and a link to Randall Library's holdings.
News and opinion magazines evaluate news, social and political events. Published weekly or monthly, news and opinion magazines do not focus on reporting the news "objectively" but on discussing events from one (usually) editorial point-of-view, such as liberal, conservative, left, right, balanced, or middle-of-the-road.
An important part of searching your topic is the proper analysis of the periodical for editorial stance. If you discover that most of your reading represents only one point of view, your argument may be vulnerable to a position you have not considered. You may then want to expand your search to include periodicals from other editorial stances. The purpose for reading a wide range of periodical articles on your topic is to insure that you have logically argued, given any possible point of view.
CRITERION FOR EVALUATING NEWS AND OPINION MAGAZINES
- Evaluate news and opinion magazines, first by examining the actual publication.
- Editorial columns and letters to the editor, usually located in the front of each issue, often reveal the bias of the periodical.
- Advertisements, frequently sponsored by partisan companies, point to the persuasion of the magazine's intended audience.
- Other areas for examination are the irony and connotations of headlines and the style of photographs.
- Finally, look at a review of the magazine in Bill and Linda Sternberg Katz's Magazines for Libraries, located in the Ready Reference Collection, call number Z6941 .K2. Individual titles, located in the title index (back of the work), are assigned an entry number. Entries are arranged by broad categories, such as "News and Opinion." Each entry contains the title of the periodical, year it started, frequency of publication, periodical indexes that analyze it, and a review that, among other things, discusses the political stance of the publication.
The following chart is a list of news and opinion magazines available through Randall Library. The title of the magazine contains a link to Randall Library's holdings. The middle column identifies the editorial stance of the magazine, and the final column identifies databases that index the magazine, with the asterisk indicating full text.
|
TITLE |
EDITORIAL STANCE |
DATABASE/RANDALL HOLDINGS |
|
Catholic (Liberal) |
EbscoHost (Academic Search Complete) |
|
|
Eclectic |
EBSCOHost (Business Source Complete) |
|
|
Conservative |
EbscoHost (Academic Search Complete) |
|
|
Moderate |
EbscoHost (Academic Search Complete) |
|
|
Moderate (Jewish) |
EbscoHost (Academic Search Complete) |
|
|
Liberal |
EbscoHost (Academic Search Complete) |
|
|
Catholic (liberal) |
EbscoHost (Academic Search Complete) |
|
|
Liberal (English) |
EbscoHost (Academic Search Complete) |
|
|
Eclectic (reprints) |
EbscoHost (Academic Search Complete) |
|
|
Left |
EbscoHost (Academic Search Complete) |
|
|
Supports free trade. |
EbscoHost (Academic Search Complete) |
|
|
Centrist mostly |
EbscoHost (Academic Search Complete) |
|
|
Randall Library |
||
|
The Harris Poll |
Randall Library |
|
|
Human Events |
Conservative |
EbscoHost (Academic Search Complete) |
|
Monthly Review (electronic) |
Left/Marxist |
EbscoHost (Academic Search Complete) |
|
Left |
EbscoHost (Academic Search Complete) |
|
|
Liberal |
EbscoHost (Academic Search Complete) |
|
|
Conservative |
EbscoHost (MasterFILE Complete) |
|
|
Conservative |
EbscoHost (Academic Search Complete) |
|
|
Eclectic |
EbscoHost (EJS) |
|
|
Left (British) |
EbscoHost (Academic Search Complete) |
|
|
Moderate |
EbscoHost (Academic Search Complete) |
|
|
Left |
EbscoHost (Academic Search Complete) |
|
|
Conservative |
EbscoHost (Academic Search Complete) |
|
|
Eclectic |
EbscoHost (EJS) |
|
|
Left (Libertarian) |
EbscoHost (Academic Search Complete) |
|
|
Left (?) |
EbscoHost (Academic Search Complete) |
|
|
The Spectator |
Conservative (British) |
Lexis Nexis |
|
Liberal (Jewish) |
EbscoHost (Academic Search Complete) |
|
|
Middle-of-Road |
EbscoHost (Academic Search Complete) |
|
|
Conservative (slightly) |
EbscoHost (Academic Search Complete) |
|
|
Eclectic |
EbscoHost (Academic Search Complete) |
|
|
Liberal |
EbscoHost (Academic Search Complete) |
|
|
Conservative |
Lexis-Nexis Academic |
|
|
Moderate Left |
EbscoHost (Academic Search Complete) |
|
|
Randall Library |
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