New news sources
Jinfo Blog

9th February 2009

By Diana Nutting

Item

I’ve noticed a couple of new news services recently. Newscred (http://www.newscred.com/) is a search engine that draws together what it describes as credible news in one place. It has sections for various categories and countries. Users can register and choose the news sources they want or simply use it as a search engine. It is also possible to vote and learn which articles, journalists and news sources are credible and which ones aren't. Content on Newscred is free. Meanwhile the Newspaper Licensing Agency (http://www.nla.co.uk/) has set up ClipSearch (http://digbig.com/4yftw) which offers newspaper clips and full articles, all in pdf format. The PDFs come from the newspapers’ production departments and retain the look and feel of the original publication, although any other copy that was on the original page has been removed. The big advantage of Clipsearch is its pricing model, which allows users to buy 'credits' for less than £2 each; the more you buy, the cheaper it is. An article clip costs one credit and a full page two credits. Unlike Newscred ClipSearch covers only UK publications. I don’t think that either of these services is likely to dent the market share of the Big Three, but for those who have only a very occasional need for news content, they could provide a cheap alternative.

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