Next time you start to search for a story, start your email program instead of searching the whole World Wide Web. Why? Because email can be distributed not only to single individuals but also to mailing lists - whole groups of people interested in the same topic. There you will find lots of information, tips and hints. If you can send and receive email, it is easy to learn how to join a mailing list. They have become a popular way for Internet users to keep up with topics they're interested in. A mailing list can have any number of subscribers, 10 or 2,000. They receive mail from all other participants and a server distributes theirs to all of the others. There are more than 90,000 different lists and new ones start ar being set up daily.

How to join a mailinglist

In order to join such a group you have to subscribe by email to a "listserver" first. Basically that is a programme that keeps track of who is on the list and who is not, thus determining who is allowed to write to the list and who will get all the mails.Most times you have to send a mail to the listserver's administrative address with the command subscribe in the message body. Often you have to write your name and email address in the message body.

E.g.: To subscribe to IRE-L, the mailinglist run by "Investigative Reporters & Editors Inc." you can send an e-mail to

listproc@lists.missouri.edu

In the body of the message, type

subscribe ire-l your name

Leave the subject field of your message blank, and don't attach a signature. Your name will be automatically added to the mailing list, and you'll receive instructions about the list (IRE-L in our exampl). The instructions will explain how to post messages to the list, how to receive a daily digest instead of every message and how to unsubscribe. Be sure to keep these instructions whenever you subscribe to a list. You will need them if you should ever want to leave the list. From now on you will get a lot of email :-).

In order to send an email of your own to everyone on the list, you use a second address - the address of the list itself. E.g.: ire-l@lists.missouri.edu. Please make sure that you keep these two adresses apart! A lot of people get irritated if they find a message in their postbox that says nothing but "unsubscribe".

At the moment there are three very common programmes to administer mailinglist on the market. These are "listserv", "majordomo" and "listproc". Unfortunately, each of these have slightly different commands and rules. But no matter what type of mailing list you want to subscribe to, you can always send the simple command "help" to any administrative email address. Sending the "help" command in the body of the mail will trigger the server to auto-send you a message that explains the appropriate commands for whatever system you happen to have encountered.

Before you subscribe to any list, send away for the information file that describes the main focus, list protocol and other helpful information about the list. To do so on a listserver's list, send the command "info", and the name of the list (for example info IRE-L), in the body or subject of the message to the appropriate administrative address. In a few minutes, you should get an informational message about the mailing list. That helps you to decide whether or not you want to subscribe.

A lot of listservers archive all messages that are posted. And in many cases it's possible (though slightly complicated) to make a full-text-search within these archives. Sending "help" to the administrative adress should tell you whether it is possible and if so, how. Many lists also respond to the "review" command, which sends you a list of all subscribers and their email addresses. (Visit our page for searching mailing lists to get more details.) This can be a helpful way to locate sources and let you know how many people subscribe to a given list.

Advantage of mailinglists

The advantages of mailing lists are obvious: You only need one message to communicate with a lot of people about a special topic (there are some special lists for journalists). Most of the lists are free. They are a kind of closed societies which means you "know" the others. The quality and usefulness of the information will be higher than in newsgroups at the Usenet since you have to subscribe in order to join the list. That makes it easy for the list "owner" to exclude a member who uses the list to spread advertisements or insults etc. On the other hand in newsgroups you can find much more different opinion and ideas since they are much more open. You should be able to use both possibilities.

Many lists are archived and can easily be searched for past discussions. You can easily research for specified topics, find people with insights, ask for help, share your experience and expertise, stay informed on the latest developments in a particular topic or you can let others know about your business. You can also choose to answer on the list or directly to the sender.

Before starting to post mail you should learn about the list by reading its mail for a while. In this way you also can learn about the mailing list's netiquette, i.e. how to "behave". What you should never do is post messages to the list that have nothing to do with the topic of the list or start fighting with people on the list. If you don't like someone and you feel like you have to tell him, do so in a private email. The other subscribers are definetly not interested in these sort of "flame-wars". Better yet, count to ten calm down and keep the flame to yourself.

Set up a new list

If you want to, you also can set up a new mailing list. In that case you need to put it on an Internet server. Often your Internet service provider will help you set it up and host it on their server, usually for free. If your provider doesn't offer this service, there are some other sites that will. E.g: Onelist, Topica or Coollist.

However, don't forget that mailing lists are not by any means perfect. It's not only that mail seems often more annoying than helpful. You also need to be extremely wary of any information you pull off of mailing lists; just because someone subscribes to a list about business ethics doesn't mean that he's an expert on the subject. Mailing lists may not be the ultimate reporting tool, but they can give any writer a new and nevertheless important and helpful source for information. But even though the reverse can also be true, the payoffs are immeasurable if you find the right list for you.

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