Information systems used by press?

I have to identify them and to evaluate their quality (=fitness for use). For that, I need your remarks and your councils.

Posted: 2007-07-03

I'm a student in information and communication science at the free university of Brussel (Université Libre de Bruxelles - ULB) in Belgium (and then please excuse me in advance for the errors of English, I do my best). Actually, I'm working on the information systems used by the journalists of the printing press to make their papers.

First, I have to identify what kinds of systems are used.
I already identify the databases where the daily press is recorded every day and archived. In Belgium, there is for example "Pressbanking" where all the french publications are registred.
Also the News agency like Reuters, Belga, AFP and AP. They continuously offer news at every moment of the day. Their access is paying and then I do'nt test them for the moment but I will do it.
We have also the aggregator news. In Europe, for example, there are floppy.com, widepress.com, actuello.com but alos the "great" Google News, MSN Newsbot, TOpix and Yahoo News. The principe is to facilitate the look on the international press. When we click on the link, we arrive on the original site. Then this aggregator do'nt archive the articles.
And finally, I naturally identify the blogs. There are a lot of blog in the world who tell what's happening. And then, we find also aggregator for blogs like globalvoicesonline.org or technorati.
I wourld like to know if there is another kind of information systems that journalists use.

In a second time, I work on the quality of those systems. Then I have to know what the journalists think of them : what are the expectations, the inconveniences (access, price, kind of information, ...), how can we improve them ? ...
The quality's definition is here the "fitness for use". Then what are the uses ?

In addition I find very interesting the collaboration between the News Agency and the aggregator of blogs but the question is : how to manage the information which come from blogs ? What do you think about it ?

I thanks you in advance for your answers which will be to me, I am persuaded of it, of an invaluable and relevant help.

Arnaud Hulstaert
ahulstae@ulb.ac.be