Five Internet news sites were selected to develop a sample of that election coverage.
Slate is a popular web-only news site.
Salon is a more liberal news site and the National Review is more conservative. Search criteria was designed to cast the widest net possible. Any appearance of the names Bush or Gore qualified a story for inclusion in the original sample. All national campaign stories highlighted on that page were captured the first time they appeared. The sample was next refined by eliminating duplicate stories, photo captions, letters to the editor and unedited transcripts of candidate debates or speeches.