Government Policy Newslinks is maintained by professional journalists whose primary mission is to help introduce their news media colleagues to the full and uninhibited array of public policy ideas and issues that is available on the Internet.
We believe our goal is being achieved on several different levels for several different reasons.
Approximately 75% of our subscribers are editors and reporters who are working in print and broadcast newsrooms throughout the country. Because they pay a fee to receive our daily report (as opposed to the avalanche of free information that is available--but of questionable value--on the Internet), we are confident that they represent a segment of the news media which is highly receptive to public policy ideas and issues—and are anxious to report on them to their readers and viewers.
We accomplish our mission by reviewing several thousand websites every night, something no journalist could possibly do alone. Often, we provide information about current public policy issues that can provide an extra dimension of statements from policymakers whose viewpoints might not otherwise have come to an editor’s or a reporter’s attention. Or help to widen the public debate by exposing editors and reporters to organizations that are unfamiliar to them.
Because we conduct an unlimited and wide search for information, our "no holds barred" approach ensures that we can introduce news editors and reporters to yet undiscussed issues. We have thus created a web-based reporting tool that restores an ingredient of spontaneous discovery to the news-gathering process.
Edward Zuckerman, Editor
Ed has always been in journalism, beginning in 1963 as a general assignment reporter for a semi-weekly newspaper in Chicago Heights, Ill. He moved on to reporting and editing assignments at daily newspapers in Kankakee, Ill., and Gary, Ind.
After working 10 years in the Washington bureau of Knight-Ridder Newspapers, Ed left in 1980 to publish a newsletter, The Political Finance & Lobby Reporter (also known as PACs & Lobbies). The newsletter was retired after an amazing 25-year run at the end of 2005. During that time, Ed also published nine biennial editions of the highly acclaimed The Almanac of Federal PACs, which is now published by Congressional Quarterly Press Inc.
