Let’s take a closer look at some of the most common myths—and the reality behind them:

Myth #1: Public Records Are Enough

Public records are a great starting point, but they don’t tell the whole story. Many significant developments never make it into court filings or government databases. News articles can surface details about business deals, legal disputes, or regulatory issues that haven’t yet entered official records—or may never appear there at all. They help fill in the blanks and uncover leads you might otherwise miss.

Myth #2: News Sources Are Just Fluff

Some see news as too soft to be useful in an investigation. But solid reporting can reveal a lot—how someone responds to pressure, how they handle setbacks, and what others say about them. That kind of detail matters. You’ll also find images, graphics, and maps that add helpful context to your findings.

Myth #3: Online News Can’t Be Trusted

It’s true that misinformation is out there, but that doesn’t mean all online news is unreliable. The key is to evaluate your sources carefully. Ask yourself: Is this source reputable? Are the facts verifiable? Premium databases like LexisNexis and Factiva include vetted news sources with editorial oversight. And once you develop a system for evaluating what you find, online news becomes a powerful part of your toolbox.

Myth #4: Google Covers It All

Google is a great place to start, but it’s not the finish line. Many valuable articles—especially older content or trade publications—won’t show up in a basic search. That’s where news databases and specialized sources come in. A layered search strategy helps you catch what others miss.

Myth #5: Only Negative News Matters

Yes, red flags are important—but so is seeing the full picture. Positive coverage can highlight accomplishments, community involvement, and leadership qualities that matter just as much. Balanced reporting helps you avoid confirmation bias and make more informed decisions.

Myth #6: AI Can Do It for Me

GenAI tools like ChatGPT can help with brainstorming or analysis, but they don’t replace solid research. These tools aren’t built for real-time, comprehensive news searching. They can point you in a direction, but you still need to verify, cross-check, and dig into the details using multiple trusted sources.

Myth #7: News Research Takes Too Much Time

It doesn’t have to. A strategic approach to news searching—starting broad, refining keywords, and using filters—can actually save time. Tools like alerts and monitoring services also keep you updated without constant manual searching.

The reality: is that news sources help fill critical gaps in your investigations. When done right, news research:

• Reveals information you won’t find in public records
• Provides leads and helps with verification
• Adds personality, behavior, and context
• Keeps you current on trends and developments
• Strengthens your findings with another layer of intelligence

Don’t let these myths limit your investigations. With the right strategies and tools, news sources can add depth and insight that your clients will appreciate. The more complete the picture, the better the decisions—and that’s what due diligence is all about.

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As with any type of research, online news and social media has its challenges. It takes time to cover your topic broadly and deeply, and there’s often a lot more involved than just a few quick searches.

Let’s talk about some of the challenges of news and social media and how to work around them.

It’s hard to find
There isn’t one database that works well for news, and you’ll likely need both free and fee-based sources. For social media, you’ll come across lots of sources with lots of promises, but one source won’t cover it all. Other issues that make online news and social media hard to find are paywalls, date restrictions, and private accounts.

Too much information
Especially with big stories and breaking news, you’ll be inundated with results. It’s difficult to sort through all the misinformation, disinformation, and deep fakes and identify what’s relevant. For social media, the information stream can quickly turn into a firehose, and with so many platforms, checking them all can be tedious.

Too little information
With some topics, you may find little to no news or social media content. Perhaps your subjects aren’t covered in the news, and not everyone’s on social media. Many companies prefer privacy over telling all, and emerging industries and niche topics often translate into fewer search results.

Now that we’ve covered some of the biggest challenges of searching news and social media, now what?

• Budget plenty time to find the right sources, construct the right searches, and sift through the results.
• Learn how to evaluate your sources and everything that you find. Yes, that also takes time, but have a checklist or system, and know what to look for.
• Save some time with aggregators, sources that collect news from lots of different places, but know their limitations. They don’t include everything, and you might miss something important.
• Take advantage of your library’s free news databases. All you need is a library card. Be sure to check the usage agreements or with a librarian, though, to see they can be used for your business.
• Identify the most likely social platforms, because you can’t do it all. If you’re not experienced with a particular platform, consider bringing in an expert.
• For the best coverage, try Google for social media and then search the platforms directly. Again, you need to take a multi-pronged approach.
• Manage your and your clients’ expectations regarding coverage, budget, and timeframe. This is probably the most important tip, because you don’t want to promise more than you can deliver.

Online news and social media searches have their limitations. Make sure you know what they are and how to work around them.

If you’d like to learn more about news searching and other topics, check out my online courses.

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Here are just a few examples of what we’ve been able to find that made a difference for our asset clients:

• Rural land with mineral rights – Our subject owned several tracts of land in rural Oklahoma, which – on paper – didn’t hold much value. But a short article in the business news reported that one piece of land had recently produced oil. A “gusher,” as they described it.

• Liquor license application – Through public records, we found a business related to our subject, but we had little besides a business name and address. Nothing described what this company did. A broad news search led us to information about its operations and confirmation of a liquor license.

• Conflict of interest – In one case, the attorney suspected a conflict of interest between the debtor and an appraiser. After finding no connections in the online public records, we discovered a previous business partnership through our search of older news articles.

Yes, news and social media research adds value to asset investigations, but there are challenges. Too much information, too little, and let’s not get started with the sales pitches and misinformation.

Here are my 5 top tips for overcoming these challenges and using news and social media research for asset investigations:

Know what to look for – Anything can be important, but it helps to filter out the noise. For asset investigations, here’s what I’m generally interested in:

• Full names, aliases, addresses, and other identifying information
• Relatives, friends, and other associates
• Significant others’ profiles
• Homes, businesses, boats, other assets
• Lifestyle, habits, patterns
• Photos

Focus on the “Why?” – It’s easy to get distracted in a hyperlinked world. Avoid straying from what’s important or feeling overwhelmed by too many results by focusing on these two questions:

• Why is the information needed?
• How will it be used?

Go beyond Google – You’ve heard me say it before, and I’ll keep saying it. Try different search engines like Bing and Biznar, and use some fee-based news databases like LexisNexis or NewsBank. Go directly to each social platform to search, and try a social search engine. Google is a tool, but it’s not the only one.

Go local – Don’t forget the local news for finding assets. These sources go into more depth than their national counterparts when it comes to locally-based individuals and companies. Use premium databases that let you limit by location, or go directly to the news source. I like to use this directory of links.

Know how it works – It’s hard to search social media platforms if you have no idea how they work. Learn about users, topics, etiquette, rules for searching with or without creating a profile, and how to search anonymously. Become familiar with advanced search options in your news databases, and get to know their limitations.

What are your tips and tricks for using news and social media for asset investigations?

(I’ll be talking more about online asset research at the upcoming NALI Mid-Winter 2022 Virtual Conference. Hope to “see” you there!)

The post Using News and Social Media for Finding Financial Assets – 5 Top Tips appeared first on Marcy Phelps and Associates.

Not a day goes by without searching online news, and I always include this step in our background investigations–for several reasons:

Find what’s not in public records – While public records can reveal a lot about a person or company, there’s a lot missing. In a recent example, the property tax record described several acres of rural land with mineral rights. That’s it. In the news, we learned that our subject, who’s avoided paying on a judgment by claiming poverty, made significant sums of money after an oil strike.

News adds “color” – One due diligence client refers to the news as the “color” in our reports. It’s where we’ve learned about all the bar fights involving one of their executives, and it’s where we find out about the good that someone does during their spare time. News completes the profile.

Because it’s there – As a professional researcher or investigator, you want to do the best work for your clients. Adding the news to the mix creates a more well-rounded report, and clients appreciate when you can deliver the hard-to-find answers to their questions.

But don’t take just my word for it. Everyone’s work is different, so I recently reached out to my LinkedIn connections, and they responded with their usual generosity and insights. Here are the reasons and the examples they shared, which illustrate when and–most importantly–why they search online news:

Profile building:
Find leads
Verify or fill gaps in self-reported professional experience
Identify business partners, regulators

Staying up-to-date:
New technology, laws, security gaps, trends, impending problems, solutions
Identify common schemes and develop strategies for audits/investigations
Monitoring what’s public about you/your clients and your/their companies.

Compliance:
Monitoring adverse news for AML programs
Enhanced Due Diligence in KYC (verify client identity & additional risks)
For watch lists, news can help identify individuals

When you need to learn as much as you can about companies and individuals, don’t skip online news searching. You never know what you could be missing.

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What’s missing from news databases?

Finding a conflict of interest is like looking for a needle in a haystack. You’re trying to prove a negative, which is a difficult thing to do, and you need to be thorough. For this case, I was tasked with finding news articles that could uncover a business relationship. To make sure my databases included the local news that would really help in this situation, I checked the lists of sources that are generally included with these search tools. It was quite an eye-opener. Some databases didn’t cover the sources I needed. Others did, but only went back a few years. Some stopped covering them several years ago, and all only included “selected articles.” Armed with this information, I had a long talk with the client and managed their expectations. After determining that they understood the limitations of these types of searches, I did the best I could. This meant relying on not just one source and searching multiple databases to get the best coverage possible.

What’s missing from public records?

Public records, including deeds, assessments, business filings, court documents, and more, can be a rich source of answers about companies and individuals. But not everything makes it into the the public record. This conflict-of-interest case is a great example. My client, another private investigator, had searched high and low in court documents, property records, and corporation filings, but there was nothing to indicate that our subjects had any sort of business partnership. In the news databases, though, I found several articles that mentioned an undisclosed relationship. It was exactly what my client and their client needed. Dig deep into news stories and social media to find what’s missing, and don’t rely on just public records.

What’s missing from online sources, in general?

With so much available through the web these days, it’s easy to become complacent and rely on what you find online. Yes, it’s handy to enter your search terms and locate the articles or documents that will answer all your questions. But will they? Certain court records can only be found at the courthouse. Not all jurisdictions post their public records. And, as mentioned earlier, news sources don’t include all their articles in online databases. Maybe what you’re looking for is so new that no one has taken the time to gather – no less post to a website – this obscure information. Or, perhaps you’re seeking the human side to the story. That’s when it’s time to step away from your computer and pick up the phone or conduct some boots-on-the-ground research. In this conflict-of-interest case, my client made sure to let their client know the limitations of online sources, in general, and they agreed that this would be a first pass only.

While online sources save time, make sure you know what’s missing. It can make a big difference in your results, and you never want it over-promise or under-deliver.

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Also, I never use just one source, because there’s no one, best source for any type of online research. With investigations, what you miss can be critical.

So, here are my favorite sources for news and why I use them:

LexisNexis – With a huge database and professional search features, this is my first stop. I like the different options for downloading and printing, and their customer service can’t be beat. They’ll help with creating my search and will run the search to make sure it works. Yes, I’ve had my gripes about some of their recent “upgrades,” but I couldn’t do what I do without this professional tool.

Dow Jones Factiva – After LexisNexis, I’ll head to Factiva for the Dow Jones-specific content (The Wall Street Journal and Barron’s) and anything else that may not show up in LexisNexis. Yes, you can now find Dow Jones content in LexisNexis, but I prefer to go to the source, in case some articles don’t make it over to LexisNexis. Again, the advanced search and filters make it easy to drill down to what I need.

ProQuest Dialog – Dialog has long been the professional power tool for online research, although in recent years they’ve drastically cut their business content. But, every so often, I find something here that I don’t find elsewhere, especially older articles. Again, I need to be thorough.

Google – After the fee-based sources, I head to good old Google. Not Google News, which is sorely lacking lately, but Google’s web index. Here, I sometimes find an article that’s not included in LexisNexis, Factiva, or Dialog. I have no idea why, but it’s been a lifesaver for this investigator.

Bing – With limited advanced search options, Bing isn’t as powerful as the others. It’s worth a quick look, though, because you never know what the others could miss. Mostly I find social media that I didn’t find elsewhere, not news, but I like to make sure.

ABYZ News Links – Sometimes you need to skip the aggregators and go direct to the source. For example, if I want to search for something that the national news might not have covered in much detail, I’ll check the local news outlets. Organized by geography, this directory offers links to online news sources from around the world.

What sources do you use for searching news and why?

Additional notes in response to questions I’ve received:

1. I’ve been asked which LexisNexis product I use: Lexis Advance.
2. Yes, these fee-based products aren’t cheap. What helps is that, through my AIIP membership, I receive some nice discounts on Factiva and Dialog (among other info products). Still not exactly cheap, but much better than without these benefits – and definitely worth the investment.

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By examining court filings, verifying credentials, and confirming employment history, we can determine if someone’s been involved in fraudulent activities and if they are who they say they are. Any red flags factor into decisions about investments, partnerships, or other business ventures.

My favorite part of the investigation, though, is the media report. In this section, we describe the results of our searches of news and social media. It’s where we learn details we can’t find through court and other public records. And it’s where we find what one client calls “the color” – which gives us a sense of what this potential partner is really like.

Unfortunately, many due diligence providers either skip media searches entirely or limit them to just negative news. Learning about litigation, firings, and other mishaps is an important part of the process, but you’re missing out on a lot of other valuable information.

Here are just a few examples of the nuggets from news and social media that weren’t found elsewhere in our investigations or wouldn’t have come up in a negative news search:

Country of birth – Neither supplied nor found information provided the country of birth for our subject. Through an article about her visit to the U.S. as a teenager, we learned that she was, in fact, from Australia. This opened a new avenue to explore, and, as a result, we found several unreported affiliations.

Current residence – Throughout our investigation, we assumed our subject lived in the U.K., since that’s where his firm was headquartered and where he’s always worked. On his wife’s Facebook page, though, we found a post about their recent move to the U.S. Again, this changed the direction of the investigation, and – since he was in the U.S. – we had much more information at our disposal.

True character – With money and reputations at risk, it’s a good idea to get to know the people behind your investments or partnerships. Through our media reports we’ve learned about one subject’s long-time girlfriend, who has a habit of getting into bar fights when she’s been over-served. Then there’s the guy with a year-long gap in his resume, where he just listed “Sabbatical.” After exhausting the rest of my usual sources, I finally turned to Bing, where I found blog posts about his participation in an around-the-world sailing race that tested his physical and mental strength.

Use news and social media, good and bad, to fill in the blanks, get a sense of someone’s reputation – and add some color to your background investigations.

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In his book, Hedge Fund Due Diligence, Randy Shain rails against this practice, pointing out the limitations of these searches and what you may be missing. He calls negative news searching “an incredibly bad decision” and emphasizes the importance of casting a wide net, looking for the unexpected, and spotting the connections.

I totally agree with Randy on the limitations of searching just for those red-flag keywords, and here at Phelps Research we mostly avoid them in our media reports on individuals and companies. Our clients want a full view of the people running their investigations, because the pluses often tell you as much as the negatives.

But certain times demand certain tactics.

Maybe you’re buried in search results, perhaps thousands of articles, and you are on a tight deadline. Or perhaps you’re trying to identify issues at past employers during or after your subjects’ time there (e.g., mass exodus, business implosion, regulatory issues, etc.). These articles don’t usually mention your subject, and searching for all news about a large firm – even with date limitations – can be a challenge.

These are times when you use every advanced search technique in the book to narrow the search and dig for those valuable nuggets of news. And when that doesn’t work, you pull out the negative news search. Yes, it has its drawbacks, but sometimes taking the time to search and scan so many articles isn’t what the client wants or needs.

So, how do you balance the pros and cons of a negative news search?

Consider the client’s level of risk – For higher levels, take the time to do whatever is needed to be as thorough as possible. But for a first pass at your subject, for example, a negative news search can help weed out those that don’t make the cut.

Consider the client’s budget and time frame – Need something about your subject right away, but LexisNexis won’t return that many results? Again, try a negative news search.

Keep the client informed – Clearly spell out the limitations of negative news searches in conversations with your client and in your reports. Online due diligence is inherently not complete (no, it’s not all online), so spell out what’s included and what’s not.

Pick up the phone – Conversations with past co-workers or other acquaintances can fill in the gaps and perhaps save time in the long-run. Beware that, done right, these calls take time and do add to the budget. But they’re invaluable for catching things you’ll never find online and for high-risk situations.

Yes, negative news searches leave a lot out, and they should be avoided whenever possible. But when you need them, they do come in handy.

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For due diligence background investigations this means that, as the hometown heroes (or villains), your subjects’ accomplishments and failures might be well-documented in the local news. If you’re checking out company history, local sources will have more info than national – even for large, well-known firms.

And don’t stop at newspapers. Look for television and radio broadcasts, magazines, and news blogs. Check out the alternative press as well.

So, find out where your subject is from or currently resides, or where the company is headquartered, and try these sites for local news:

U.S. Local News – From the University of Texas Libraries, this directory includes a state-by-state listing of news outlets offering free access. For global coverage, try ABYZ News Links.

American City Business Journals – With weekly newspapers in more than 40 cities, this is an excellent source of local business insights.

Radio-Locator – Search by city or ZIP Code for webpages and audio streams of private and public radio stations in the U.S.

Google News – If you can find the advanced search page (look for the arrow in the search box), enter a topic and location, or just use the location syntax in the basic search box: Coors location:Denver

Due diligence investigations require in-depth research, and local news sources will help you dig deep. What are your favorite sites for local news?

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