Also, mailing lists are user friendly. Unlike Usenet groups, you don't have to keep logging on and hunting through the newsgroups for relevant information. A good mailing list will keep delivering realms of neat stuff for your stories right to your e-mail box. The most common are interactive. Here is how they work.
Any member sends out a message that is automatically posted to every other subscriber.
Anyone who reads the message can respond or comment, and everyone else can follow the thread of the discussion. You can also continue to correspond to someone you meet in a mailing list through private e-mail. So, if you were working on an AIDS story, you could hunt for a mailing list devoted to the experts in the field you need. You subscribe, listen in to their chat and post a message requesting the help you need. The second kind of lists are simply newsletters.