How do I find news or rather updates on former big splash stories that no 
longer appear in the newspaper but still interest me and I am sure thousands of 
others. For instance a year or two back a major story broke of woman who had 
eight babies of which seven were apparently healthy and well by time story 
dropped off news.  I always wondered if they lived or not after that first week 
of constant updates evry day that suddenly stopped without a single word from 
anyone.

Hi johnfrommelbourne,

Unfortunately, there's not a one-stop shop on the web for old news stories.

The approach you should take depends on the nature of the story.  If it was a 
story that made national news, such as this one, I'd suggest trying the larger 
news sites such as CNN, The Washington Post or The New York Times. (Although 
it's free, registration is required for The New York Times site.)
Otherwise, your best bet would be to go to the local site newspaper, TV or 
radio that relates to the story.  

You can also try portal sites such as MSN and Yahoo!.  These sites have news 
sections that include past and present coverage of a continuing story.  

Whether you use a national, local or portal news site, sometimes the hard part 
is finding the information you want. You can approach your search in two ways:

1) Use the right search term -- or simply use a variety of search terms.  In 
this case, a search of "texas octuplets" on Yahoo!, yields much better results 
than "houston octuplets"

2) Look for the in-depth coverage section on these web sites.  The catch here 
is that each media organization labels this section differently. Here are the 
areas or terms you should try:

special report
specials
full coverage
continuing coverage
in-depth

If you're lucky, these areas will be plainly labeled on the front page of the 
site, but in some cases, you'll have find them areas by going to a site map or 
site index, or by searching on the terms that I've listed above.  

For example, in the menu on the left side of CNN's site, there's a section 
called "In-Depth"
http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/
If you go there, you'll find expanded coverage from the last several years on a 
variety of topics 

If you go to the Washington Post's site, you'll have to click into each 
category (Nation, World, Metro, etc.) for a list of special reports. 
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/nation/specials/

One thing to watch for on newspaper sites is the archive section because you 
may have to pay for that service.

Here's a list of other sites that offer on-going coverage:

ABC News
http://more.abcnews.go.com/onair/abcnewsspecials/SpecialsIndex.html

MSNBC News
http://www.msnbc.com/news/continuingcoverage_front.asp?0dm=N205N

Yahoo! News
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/fc/


Here are a couple of sites to try if you're looking for local news sites:

Newspapers US and Worldwide
http://www.refdesk.com/paper.html

Most-linked-to local news sites
http://newslink.org/toptypes.html

Hope this helps,
Katwoman

I would  have given five stars as answer was terrific and more than expected.  
However on seeing some other responses that were  more comprehensive,  
especially answer to question on "Where can I buy a burqua", I can see that 
that resaeracher put even more time and effort into question. In that event  
the five stars seemed not enough if my researcher also  recieved  five stars so 
if the latter can only get five then my researcher would have to go one degree 
less which on your rating system is  four. I think the point of what I am 
saying is that like with hotel ratings around the world there is not enough 
flexibility in five only points to effectively seperate very goog from good 
from excellentand then perhaps outstanding( alreday leaving aside average, poor 
and very poor). To solve the problem I think you need half stars between each 
full star,(if you know what I mean).  In any case thanks to KATWOMAN for 
terrific assistance provided very cheaply

Some news websites allow you to search past content, so for stories like this 
which only happened a few years ago you can usually find out more recent 
information by searching specific news sites. The trick with searching is 
creating an accurate search term, but in this case you're in luck because eight 
babies are 'octuplets', which is a good word to search for (better than, 
say, '8 babies' or 'multiple birth', because it will return fewer stories which 
are usually more relevant).

Searching cnn.com for 'octuplet' returned 30 matches, most of which were about 
the octuplets born in Houston in 1998. The most recent one was after the seven 
surviving babies' first birthday:
http://www.cnn.com/1999/US/12/20/octuplets/index.html

General web searches can help too. For example, searching Google for 'octuplets 
houston' returned 512 matches; the top one was written only a few months ago 
and summarises the babies' lives to date:
http://www.twinstuff.com/houoctup.htm

The Google search is probably a good place to start if you're looking for 
general information. Searching a specific news site is good to see how the 
story was presented at the time.

Hope this helps!

try to see via the Wayback Machine (www.archive.org) the stories main news web 
sites were covering back then ...

From earlier comment:

"However on seeing some other responses that were  more comprehensive,  
especially answer to question on "Where can I buy a burqua", I can see that 
that resaeracher put even more time and effort into question."

That question paid $25, while yours paid $5.

A bit late perhaps but another commenter has suggested I was a bit
hard on researcher in only allotting four stars which on refection and
the point she makes I can see I was not quite fair.   Therefore
Katwoman if ever you open this question again please accept  an extra
point in spirit at least and good luck again with your  new career in
research and question answering; although I note on various  search
engine news sites that the e xperts are predicting your career will be
shortlived as this GOOGLE venture will turn out a failure!!!!!!

 Gee I hope not as i think it is fantastic