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Visual and Performing Arts Guide: Communications and Journalism Websites

Theater and Dance; Film; Music; Communications

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Advertising, Public Relations

  • Ad*access Choice Highly Recommended site; More than 7,000 digitized American and Canadian print advertisements originally published between 1911 and 1955. Site also has a good historical/social/cultural timeline.
  • AdCouncil.org Choice Highly Recommended site
  • AdViews: A Digital Archive of Vintage Television Commercials Duke University; A free digital archive of television commercials from the 1950s to the 1980s, this site provides access to commercials created or collected by the New York advertising agency Benton & Bowles.
  • MarcommWise.com Toronto-based Klebanoff Associates, the sponsor of this site, is a small marketing consulting firm that also produces marketing materials, writes copy, and plans presentations for others. MarcommWise provides articles, book reviews, a glossary of marketing terms, profitability calculators, links to other resources, and a bookstore powered by Amazon.com. Articles have "a particular emphasis on marketing communications" and are alphabetically arranged from Ad Agency Relationship to Writing.

General Media

  • Electronic Frontier Foundation The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), founded in 1990 and based in San Francisco, is a donor-funded nonprofit with the mission to protect fair use and privacy online. This site is well organized and easy to browse, although the main search feature, powered by Yahoo!'s search function, is very limited.
  • Free Speech Movement University of California - Berkeley. This Web site is the preeminent source of primary materials on this icon of the sixties, representing a joint effort by the Bancroft Library and the non-profit Free Speech Movement Archives.
  • MediaChannel.org Choice Highly Recommended site; As the media watch the world, we watch the media; a media watchdog group; site is similar in nature to FAIR, but with a stronger emphasis on the international
  • National Freedom of Information Coalition Choice Highly Recommended site
  • Old Time Radio Choice Highly Recommended site  
    and Radio Days: Radio Broadcast History Old Time Radio is the "original and most comprehensive" site will be an informative resource for anyone interested in the history of old-time radio (OTR) programming, i.e., shows produced from the beginning of radio to the 1960s.
  • Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography by Charles W. Bailey, jr; over 3,000 citations to international English-language sources. Bailey has written extensively on electronic publishing. Focusing exclusively on scholarly electronic publishing efforts on the Internet, this bibliography covers economic issues, case studies, general works, library issues, history, research, critiques, intellectual property rights, license agreements, preservation, and publication models.
  • Taking a Leading Role: Women in Broadcasting History University of Maryland; online exhibit
  • TED: Ideas Worth Spreading Choice Highly Recommended site; An annual Technology, Entertainment, Design TED conference, whose organizers challenge a primary speaker to give the talk of their lives in 20 minutes or less. More than 200 talks are available at this site; past speakers include Al Gore, Billy Graham, Jane Goodall, and Nicholas Negroponte.
  • Television Production: A Free Online Course Choice Highly Recommended site; A stellar example of an electronic text, this site is unique in that it is a comprehensive course offered at no cost to the user. Web master Ron Whittaker, author of several television production texts, offers the site with the plea that users make a "moral payment" to use the knowledge to benefit society. The site is well structured and offers many advantages over a print text..."
  • NewPages.com: Alternatives in Print & Media Frequently updated; New Pages acts as a portal viz the following quotation-- News, information and guides to independent bookstores, independent publishers, literary periodicals, alternative periodicals, independent record labels, alternative newsweeklies and more.
  • Scribd dedicated to helping people publish and share documents online, similar to the way videos are shared on YouTube. The company's publishing model is to have registered users upload their content in a variety of formats (PDF, presentations, text documents) and provide access to readers without the need for reformatting. While Scribd may provide some important resources for students, the site itself provides no way of confirming the validity of the work or the author. Content may be removed from the site without notice, and some documents do not allow in-text copying. In summary, an interesting development in new media, but like much new media analysis and use of content is highly dependent on the users individual prior knowledge of a specific topic.

Journalism

Annenberg Public Policy Center
Choice Outstanding site
C-Span Video Library
Since 1987, more than 160,000 hours have been recorded, and digital copies of these materials are now available online through this video library. Recent examples include videos on the Gulf oil spill and jobs and the economy, and notable past topics include the Iran-Contra hearings.
The Center for Public Integrity : Investigative Journalism in the Public Interest
Choice Outstanding site; Billing its work as "watchdog journalism in the public interest," this organization and its site are the antithesis of sound-bite broadcast news. The thoroughness with which it has carried out its mission since its 1989 founding has garnered it accolades from major journalism groupsThe site makes the most of its freedom from time and space limitations, so the wealth of information here can be daunting and sometimes hard to follow. But those who acquaint themselves with the pathways will be rewarded with an astonishing amount of high-quality information and with resources not easily available otherwise.
Fast Facts
A guide to fast facts like those you would find in an almanac. The site is a metasite providing and organizing links to other sites which contain the desired information. Now part of refdesk.com
FACSnet
Choice Highly Recommended site; The web site states the goal of the organization is to improve the quality of information reaching the public through the news.
Finding Data on the Internet: A Journalist's Guide
Choice Highly Recommended site
FAIR: Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting
Choice Highly Recommended site; nonprofit, public-interest organization; headings and subheadings of topics are clear and make navigation easy.
First Amendment Center.org
Choice Highly Recommended site
Free Press 
Choice Highly Recommended site; nonprofit, public-interest organization; Free Press advocates free expression, decentralized ownership, and enhanced federal stewardship of the US news and mass media. Free Press takes advantage of the Internet's organizational and education capacities to bring free press and media reform issues together in a user-friendly, well-edited format.
Freedom House.org 
A non-profit, nonpartisan organization, is a clear voice for democracy and freedom around the world. 
Investigative Reporters and Editors, Inc.
Choice Highly Recommended site; IRE is a member-supported, international organization run by investigative journalists; this site is a gateway for its members and for anyone interested in in-depth news reporting.It is intended to provide quick access to databases, model investigative stories, and current background information. Searching is free. Memberships, required to purchase the full text of articles, are $50 ($25 for students). All fees are the obligation of the researcher -- NOT UTPB
Journalism Resources
Choice Highly Recommended site; University of Iowa
Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas
Choice Highly Recommended site; University of Texas at Austin; the site focuses on Latin America
Legal Threats Database
Choice Outstanding site; Citizen Media Law Project; the database contains lawsuits, cease & desist letters, subpoenas, and other legal threats directed at those who engage in online speech. Note: No longer being updated as of 2014.
MediaChannel.org
Choice Highly Recommended site; As the media watch the world, we watch the media; a media watchdog group; site is similar in nature to FAIR, but with a stronger emphasis on the international
The Newsfilm Library at the University of South Carolina
Newslink.org
A-Z and regional links to newspapers, broadcasters and magazines; also provides a JobLink area
The Pew Research Center for the People & the Press
Choice Highly Recommended site
ProPublica: Journalism in the Public Interest
Choice Outstanding site
Religionwriters.com
developed by the Religion Newswriters Association, a nonprofit trade association; navigation is simple; site content includes surveys, daily headlines, RNA press releases and articles; the articles on current events contain background information with additional sources provided
Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography
by Charles W. Bailey, Jr.; over 3,000 citations to international English-language sources. Bailey has written extensively on electronic publishing. Focusing exclusively on scholarly electronic publishing efforts on the Internet, this bibliography covers economic issues, case studies, general works, library issues, history, research, critiques, intellectual property rights, license agreements, preservation, and publication models.
Society of Professional Journalists: Code of Ethics
Choice Highly Recommended site
STATS
Choice Highly Recommended site Statistical Assessment Service.org aims to bring quality and reliability to the reporting of statistics. The organization tries to weed out bad studies by researching current issues and the statistics behind the reports on those issues.
TED: Ideas Worth Spreading
Choice Highly Recommended site; An annual Technology, Entertainment, Design TED conference, whose organizers challenge a primary speaker to give the talk of their lives in 20 minutes or less. More than 200 talks are available at this site; past speakers include Al Gore, Billy Graham, Jane Goodall, and Nicholas Negroponte.
Television News Archive, Vanderbilt University
Choice Outstanding site

A few specialized newspaper sites

Communication