What is a popular magazine or newspaper?

Popular magazines and newspapers are published to inform or entertain readers on general interest topics. Magazine and news articles are usually short and written in simple language. Examples of magazines include Time and Sports Illustrated. The audience is the general population, and the authors of articles are usually staff journalists or freelance writers. Popular magazines often contain lots of advertising and graphics. Newspaper articles will be published shortly after a news event occurs and will often be brief and may contain graphics. Examples of newspapers are The New York Times and Chicago Tribune.

How do I find popular magazine or newspaper articles?

In many of the library's databases, there's an easy way to find popular magazine or newspaper articles. If you're using Academic Search Complete, or any of our EBSCO branded databases, on the Advanced Search page, run a search by typing your search terms into the search box. Your results list will appear. On the top of the page, under the pull-down menu "Source Type" click the check boxes that show "Magazines" and/or "Newspapers." (You may have to scroll down a bit).

After choosing either (or both) of these options, click on the Apply button to run your search in Academic Search Complete. This should limit your search results to just the articles that are published in popular magazines or newspapers. This will eliminate peer-reviewed and trade publications from your results. 

There's another way to access popular magazine or newspaper articles: After performing a search in Academic Search Complete, you can adjust your active filters in your search results. In your results list, on the top left-hand side of the page click on the menu "All Filters". Under "Source Types" you can choose the boxes that say "Magazines" and/or "Newspapers" as the source type, among other options. (You may have to scroll down). Your selections will appear under "Active Filters" at the top, and you can then apply your settings and your new list of results will appear.