IDS 101: Electric Guitar: Evaluating Resources

Look in Magazines for Libraries for short, descriptive articles about many major magazines, newspapers, and journals.

For Example: 

"The Nation is a strongly leftist publication that includes original in-depth reporting as well as significant editorial and opinion content."

"National Review...is generally considered to be the premier mainstream conservative publication."

"The Monthly Review has been publishing articles from a hard-left perspective for over 60 years."

"The New American is a hard-right magazine (usually further to the right than the National Review), published by the John Birch Society in one form or another since the 1950s."

Go to the magazine's homepage and look for the "About Us" section.

1. Reason

• Who is the intended audience?
• Is scope or purpose specifically stated? Do the contents match the stated scope?
• Is the point of view stated? Is there a particular agenda that is being pushed?
• Does it have an established reputation? If so, consider what kind of reputation it represents?
• What is the publisher's or website host's motivation for providing the information? (Advertising for profit, part of agency's mission, educational purposes, reporting original research, publicizing a particular agenda)
• What information can be gained about a website's domain code of the host address?

.com = commercial source
.gov = government agency
.org = non-profit organization
.net = consortium (profit or non-profit)
.edu = educational institution

2. Readability

3. Reliability

4. References