|
Yahoo as a general search engine can be mediocre.
But as a news dossiers service it is top flight.
Think of these Yahoo pages as an Idiot's Guide to
a Story. If you are quickly looking for background
on a story, you get the latest news, older news stories,
features, opinion pieces, and background links.
1. HOW TO GET THERE
Click
here to go to their special news site at http://news.yahoo.com:
EXTRA TIP: If you
took JNet's ONLINE
FINDING NEWS course, you already saw some
of the basic news features of Yahoo News and
learned how to use the advanced search features.
Click
here to sign up for that course if you missed
it.
This Yahoo World Page features prominent US dossiers,
as well as dossiers for Africa, Asia
and other regions, plus dossiers such as Health
and Business.(For hot stories that are
specific to Canada or the UK, see the
next two lessons.)
En FRANCAIS: Pour
Yahoo
Actualité en Français, cliquez
ici. For French-language dosssiers,
click
here for Yahoo Actualité en Français.
1B. FULL COVERAGE
The Yahoo news site is a bit like an onion and you'll
get the most from it if you slowly peel back each
layer. In this course, we are going to focus on Yahoo's
news dossiers.
The best place to start is by clicking on the link
at the top left (highlighted in yellow above) called
"FULL COVERAGE." This connects you
to their Full Coverage page at http://dailynews.yahoo.com/fc/,
which looks like this:
Click here
to open the Yahoo FULL COVERAGE page in a new window.
Take your time to explore this page.
You can click on any of the headlines or topics listed
on the page that interest you and go straight to the
story. But notice each main area -- TECH, BUSINESS,
WORLD -- has a link to more FULL COVERAGE
(four of them are highlighted in yellow above).
Click on the topic that suits you and the onion peels
away again.
1C. WORLD COVERAGE
For example, if you select FULL COVERAGE WORLD,
(click
here to open it up in a new window) you'll see
a page like this:
Now you can select the country or theme that interests
you -- for example, if you choose ARGENTINA's ECONOMIC
CRSIS, you will get Yahoo's Full Coverage on the the
topic:
Notice how this includes the most recent stories
from AP, Reuters and several top newspapers. On the
right, you'll get links to background features and
also links to opinions and editorials.
1D. THEMES
As we saw above, Yahoo Dossiers not only surveys
countries, it also surveys dossiers. Return to the
Full Coverage page at http://dailynews.yahoo.com/fc/,
and scroll down to see the various themes:
As an example, click on SCIENCE FULL COVERAGE (click
here to open the Science page at http://fullcoverage.yahoo.com/fc/Science/)
Then select Global Warming:
This is what the Gloabl warming page looks like (Click
here to go there directly at http://dailynews.yahoo.com/fc/World/Global_Warming/)
As always, Yahoo Dossiers gives you not just the
latest news, but Featured Background articles and
Related Web sites:
Did you find these free sample
in improving your web research skills? There is much
more in the full course -- 14 lessons that will help
you find the best resources for researching news dossiers.
Click
here to sign up for the full course.
Click
here to find out about other invaluable online courses.
|
JNet's Online Web Courses
