The Sad Performance of Newshound

(Revised 4/1/2004)

One of the best tools I used to track the media for years was the Knight-Ridder product Newshound.

No more. I cancelled my subscription in July, 1999.

In a classic case of non-responsiveness, unreliability, and eroding standards Newshound deteriorated to a mere shadow of the service I signed onto in 1996. At that time it was a perfect way to track news of interest. For $8 a month you could unleash up to five "hounds" (pieces of artificial intelligence that you could arm with keywords, titles, subject areas, and a choice of media to scan) and the "hounds" would "fetch" stories for you and faithfully deliver them to your e-mail address.

Newshound enabled me to scan up to 150 stories per day in the five topic areas I was working on at the time. There were convenient e-mail commands you could use to turn the hounds on and off, revise your criteria, and switch between hounds to access different information.

As a professional speaker I had recommended the service to thousands of busy executives and managers as one of the great scanning tools to bring them important information. I stopped making those recommendations at the beginning of 1999 because of six months of marginal performance. I had assurances from Newshound management that the problems would soon be over but the service continued to decline.

When I reached the customer service representative who terminated my service she told me in surprising candor, "I don't blame you a bit."

I pointed out this page in my newsletter section to the management of Newshound. I received a note from the same manager who had urged me to stay with Newshound a year ago. His statement: "Newshound is back to normal as of today." Only after I had another exchange of responses did he offer to credit my account for the months of substandard or non-existent service. If you're one of my clients that I urged to use this service, I apologize for its performance.

What I now recommend to clients is to visit a range of online publications that offer search engine service. For example, the New York Times and Wall Street Journal Interactive Edition both offer the ability to search for subjects of interest via keyword input. The WSJ Interactive is a for-fee service. The NYT is free when you supply them with subscriber information. If you have suggestions for a substitute service to Newshound I would be grateful to hear about it. Send me an e-mail via the Contact Us link at left.

Update (Added 12/15/99) Newshound Shuts Down!

Knight-Ridder shuts down Newshound as of 12/31/99. While I don't believe that the two services that are suggested on the site are substitutes for what Newshound could have offered its subscribers, the result of customer erosion must have had an impact on the service. Newshound now will rest in that great pet cemetary in the sky. This article, incidentally, has been one of the most-read pages in our newsletter.

Update (Added 4/1/04) GoogleNews is the Answer!

The best Internet clipping tool I've found since Newshound shut down is the GoogleNews Alerts service. I'm usually running anywhere from 4 to 10 searches at a time depending on my upcoming engagements or ongoing consulting relationships. Like any tool the results depend on how you choose your keywords. A major plus to this service over the old Newshound search is the global content that's returned. You'll English-language results from Europe, Asia, and even Africa when you use the service. Outstanding tool for those of us who "scan."