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How do online journalists report on things if they aren't actually out in the field reporting? I'm assuming they simply watch mainstream news, listen to government/organizational websites, etc?

Standback
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tacoma
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  • Hi, and welcome to Writers. On Stack Exchange, we like to keep to one question per post so that the community can focus on answering one question. While your first question might be arguably on-topic (it's about journalistic writing), the second question is not. You can edit your post to remove the second question. – Lauren-Clear-Monica-Ipsum May 19 '16 at 01:08
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    I think the edit is good and has focused the question well. – Goodbye Stack Exchange May 19 '16 at 17:37

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As I worked for a major news portal, about 97% of news was purchased from news agencies (the remaining 3%, authored by own journalists and columnists was kept for publicity - definitely not for articles, but for bragging rights of "having own journalist team".)

These agencies, in order, purchase their news from independent journalists doing their own "hands-on" research, or from newspapers/magazines employing own journalists.

Journalists doing research don't need to be physically present "at the site" either. There's phones, there's social media, even Google StreetView to show the location; Social Media will very likely have eyewitnesses with own recordings of the events, who can be contacted for publishing rights (or sometimes their publications taken without asking...).

Traditional hands-on journalism, being slow and costly, is slowly vanishing. It's still valuable - it's prestigious; having own reporter on site is viewed as "elite"; that's the stuff for the front page. But for each newspaper there's only one front page and good several pages inside to fill - that content is usually purchased, or assembled from sources that don't require leaving one's desk.

SF.
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  • I'd like to add to SF.'s exellent answer that simply reading other media and composing your articles from what you read, as tacoma suggested in their question, is against the law. Some better known news agencies are listed here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_news_agencies –  May 21 '16 at 11:48
  • @what: There are whole magazines that do nothing but that - composing digests - articles that take a given piece of news and composes various views, takes, insights, opinions and tidbits from multiple papers that covered that subject - often quoting (sometimes paraphrasing) them, but always giving the credit. I'm not completely sure how that works legally - is it the criticism clause of Fair Use, or some licensing agreements? But considering the scale, I doubt it's done illegally. – SF. May 22 '16 at 15:50
  • ...also, journalists follow other news outlets to know 'what's hot'. They don't need to plagiarize them - they can create their own coverage of the event - but they must know the event takes place. – SF. May 22 '16 at 15:54