Press Clipping Services

Press clipping services are a way for businesses to keep track of media coverage and determine what's being said about them (and their competitors) and their products in a variety of mediums from newspapers to magazines to web pages and Usenet groups. News clipping services can provide a much more thorough search than you could ever perform by yourself and one of their biggest benefits is that they are tremendous time savers.

The Information Age has brought a proliferation of clipping services. Following is a list of some of the most popular ones used by PR professionals and small businesses (links open new windows):

CustomScoop -- http://www.customscoop.com -- searches more than 21,000 online sources including: 5,000 U.S. news outlets, 2,000 international news outlets, 6,000 weblogs (blogs), 7,000 government sources, and 1,200 policy sources. Charges a monthly rate and offers a no-hassle 14 day trial.

Universal Information Services, Inc. -- http://www.universal-info.com -- provides press clipping services, television/radio monitoring, construction reports, on-line research, advertisement tracking, and media analysis services to local, regional, national, and international companies.

Luce Online -- http://www.luceonline.com -- monitors more than 5,000 print publications including: daily newspapers, wire services, business journals, magazines, and trade publications from the United States and abroad, as well as more than 4,000 online news sites. Charges a monthly rate.

factiva -- http://www.factiva.com -- (Formerly Dow Jones Interactive) Over 8,000 sources from around the world in almost two dozen languages, but you're going to pay for it. A service of Reuters and Dow Jones, factiva is great when you're looking for archived articles, information in trade publications and special reports. You can also get television and radio transcripts from many major media outlets. Prices start at $2.95 per article, but the company offers subscription services at different pricing levels. Contact the company for more information.

LEXIS-NEXIS Communication Center -- http://www.lexisnexis.com -- provides access to regional, U.S. and international news sources including newspapers, magazines, newswires, broadcast transcripts, and industry newsletters. Similar to factiva, but way more in-depth and with bigger archives. LexisNexis is your gateway to information related to everything from court rulings and patents to twenty year old feature articles and obituaries. The service has access to almost 25,000 media sources, but you will pay a hefty price for them. Price structures vary, so contact the company for information.

Webclipping.com -- http://www.webclipping.com -- is a comprehensive clipping service that monitors when you, your product, or your service appears anywhere on the Internet or World Wide Web. WebClipping searches the millions of pages of Web sites and Usenet discussion groups. Monthly fees vary.

Ewatch -- http://www.ewatch.com -- is a comprehensive monitoring service for the Internet that allows you to accurately track what is appearing in cyberspace about your company or product. Packages include thousands of editorial-based sites, more than 63,000 Usenet groups and electronic mailing lists, and public discussion areas. Prices vary according to the coverage you want.

Markwatch -- http://www.markwatch.com -- provides clients with weekly reports on the use of the monitored names, brands, trademarks or web pages. The service covers more than 80 million web pages, Usenet message groups, InterNIC domain names and Web-based dynamic news stories. A 12-month subscription is $3,000 and 3-month subscription is $1,295.

News Index -- http://www.newsindex.com -- continuously indexes hundreds of newspapers from around the globe. Free service. Simply type in the keywords about which you would like to find articles.

Northern Light Content Solutions -- http://www.northernlight.com -- contains information from over 7,000 journals, books, magazines, databases and newswires. Searching is free (credit card required to register); there is a fee to view articles.

CyberScan -- http://www.clippingservice.com -- is an Internet clipping service that covers online news and information, including major and smaller online journals and other web-based publications. Monthly charge based on number of services you choose and the frequency of reports requested.

Dialog -- http://www.dialog.com -- offers more than 12 terabytes of content from the world's most authoritative publishers. Designed more as an information and research tool than a traditional clipping service, several test searches found that Dialog found company news quickly. There is a small fee to view articles.

Scoop -- http://www.scoop.com -- charges $29.99 a month and searches 3,000 trusted sources to provide you with e-mail search agent alerts with progressive cross-referencing.

These are simply clipping services/news searches that we or our clients have used in the past. There are others that you can find by doing an online search. I've provided a link to several listed in the Open Directory Project (http://dmoz.org).

http://dmoz.org/News/Services/Media_Monitoring/