Also see Hoovers and Dow Jones Business Directory . A search tool for information specific to the energy industry. For journalistic purposes, this can be useful in finding out where people interested in your topic most often end up. A database of newspaper articles from non-US papers. Search archives by US state or country.
Web Rings are a good way of getting up to speed on a specific subject.
Essentially, they are a collection of sites on a single subject that are linked together by their owners. Follow the links and you'll move from a site on Alzheimer's research, for example, to a site run by the caregiver for an Alzheimer's patient to another site on approved drugs for Alzheimer's victims. Web Rings are a fast way to get a sense of what's available online, find sources who care about the subject and get a good primer on the issues. There are Web Rings on virtually any subject you can imagine. The trick is to find them.