Billed as “A Directory of Contacts for Editors and Reporters in Canada”, Sources listed “information officers, public relations officers, media relations and public affairs people, and other contacts for groups, associations, federations, unions, societies, institutions, foundations, industries and companies and federal, provincial and municipal ministries, departments, agencies and boards.”[2] Explaining the rationale behind Sources, Zwicker said that “It’s a cliché that every story has two sides.
The surprises, the jarring notes, the flashes of insight, the ‘odd takes’, the pearls of wisdom, the cries de coeur, the avant garde, tomorrow's news, the prophesies, the unfiltered, the exciting, the elsewhere-squelched, the memorable, the eccentric, the thought-out-at-length, the unmentionable in polite company, the outrageous, the uncensored ... these are what ‘alternative’ media offer.
Also on the site is Fame and Fortune, a directory of awards, prizes, and scholarships available to writers and journalists, and a portal linked into the online archive of Connexions, a library of documents related to alternatives and social justice.
The site also houses Sources Select Resources,[6] a large library of articles and reviews about journalism and the media, spanning a period of more than 30 years.
While much of the editorial content has focused on the nitty-gritty of writing, editing and research, Sources has also regularly published articles that have sparked controversy on topics such as censorship and media bias.
This campaign eventually led Canadian managing editors to agree among themselves that their newspapers would not accept free tickets from travel agencies, resorts, and hotels.
The columnist Claire Hoy was left "trembling with rage" and the editor Peter Worthington felt "outraged" and a lead editorial denounced Zwicker.
[9] In keeping with its mandate of encouraging a wide diversity of points of view in the media, Sources has added extra resources over time to help organizations and individuals to be heard.
These include a calendar of events open to the media[10] and a news release service which Sources members can use to distribute their statements and communiques via online posting and RSS.