Research Guides: COMM 107: Principles and Practices: Finding Popular Sources

Finding Popular Sources

In addition to searching the wide web for popular sources, you can also search in UMD's databases. We have entire databases dedicated to current and historical newspapers, as well as databases that include opinion pieces.

Note: not all popular sources are created equal. Some are fact-based (like news articles) and others are opinion-based (like personal blog-posts). Both types of sources can be helpful, but in different ways.

America's Historical Newspapers
Digitized and fully searchable collections of early American newspapers. Includes five databases, Early American Newspapers Series 1 - 3 and African American Newspapers which can be searched together or separately, as well as select Maryland newspapers including the Maryland Gazette (1728-1832) and Baltimore American (1861-1870, 1903-1922). Early American Newspapers includes more than 1,000 U.S. newspapers published between 1690 and 1922. African American Newspaper includes more than 270 African American newspapers published in the 19th and 20th centuries.
Nexis Uni
Nexis Uni (formerly LexisNexis Academic) provides fulltext to news, business and legal information. Newspapers date back to the 1970's. Please Note: The Washington Post is no longer included in Nexis Uni.The National Newspapers Core database includes the Washington Post.
Opposing Viewpoints in Context
Fulltext database covering social issues with topic overviews and pro/con viewpoints. Sources include news, journal articles, magazines, media, maps, websites and statistics.