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Contents |
Public Address Events
Limited Preparation Events
For more infomation on these events check the team website or contact the team advisors.
One of the best ways to stay up on current events is to read a major newspaper each day; the New York Times or the Christian Science Monitor would be two good choices. Both of the newspapers cover a wide range of topics: news, politics, science, education, etc. Another good habit is to watch the nightly news on any of the major channels. If you don't have the opportunity to do either of those here are some other suggestions:
An email alert delivers breaking news directly to your mailbox. Different sources send these notifications on different schedules; some are as soon as an event happens, others once per day or once per week. Some can be customized to follow particular subjects, some include what is basically a table of contents. If email alert is an option, you will usually see this symbol, 
.
The availability of a RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feed is usually designated by this symbol, 
. RSS feeds usually contain either a summary of content from an associated web site or the full text. With RSS you can keep up with your favorite web sites in an automated manner rather than checking them each individually manually. Unlike email alerts which land in your mailbox, you must activate a feed reader to see the news. Some RSS feeds are more active than others and you may be overwhelmed by the volume if you select too many.
Some feed builders you may want to investigate are:
you can still lift the code and add it to your feeds.
Library Databases
Many of the Library databases provide alerts. In most cases, you must already have a topic in mind.
and the text Create alert for this search. Just click on that and you will get the syndication feed link to paste into your RSS feed aggregator.
. Just click on that and fill in the information. Alerts can be emailed as often as daily and you can determine how long you want to continue getting the alerts.
Selected Other Sources
For a list of newspaper and other news sources' web sites try NewsDirectory.
| Informative/Persuasion/Communication Analysis/Speech to Entertain | Extemporaneous Speaking |
|---|---|
| Atlantic Monthly | Christian Science Monitor |
| E (Environment Magazine) | The Economist |
| GQ | Foreign Affairs |
| Health | Newsweek |
| Maclean's | New York Times |
| Men's Health | Time |
| Mother Jones | US News and World Report |
| Nature | Wall Street Journal |
| Newsweek | |
| Popular Mechanics | |
| Psychology Today | |
| Rolling Stone | |
| Scientific American | |
| Review | |
| Time | |
| US News and World Report | |
| Utne Reader |
Check and see what kind of RSS or email alerts they might have available.
Remember that most of the web sites for the above sources may show only limited amounts of the total print publication. For example, they may only provide access to the current edition or they may provide only selected articles and they may provide no free access to back editions. The main purpose of perusing the web sites is to stay current; to research use the Library databases.
The Locating Sources section of the Research Fundamentals Guide will help you with most of these needs. See also the sections of the Forensics Guide that deal with Current Events and Hot Topics. Don't forget to evaluate your sources so that they have the most impact.
Feel free to contact the Reference Desk or the Communications Librarian for help in locating resources.
This guide was last updated July 10, 2007.
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