With the myriad of news sources available, even for a specific topic like the environment, keeping up with the latest news in areas that interest you can be a daunting task. Using news alerts and aggregators to bring news to you and to organize or filter news streams can help make this task more manageable.

News alerts
Many web sites offer email updates on a daily or weekly basis. If you'd like to receive these, follow the links on the site to sign up. This can be useful for receiving updates from professional organizations or sites that cater to professionals in a specific discipline. An example are the Newswise Wires offered by Newswise, a site that supports knowledge-based journalism.

In addition, several news search engines offer alerts, most of which allow you to filter by key word. These alerts are popular in the business world for keeping up with news about competitors, and with investors for keeping up with news about companies or funds.

Google News Alerts - filter by key word and source, and how often you'd like updates. RSS and Mobile News also available.
Yahoo! News Alerts - requires a Yahoo! ID. Select from breaking news, key word news, or daily news digest. Have results sent to your email, Yahoo! Messenger, or your favorite mobile device. RSS available too.

Aggregators
Since some people don't want news alerts cluttering their email accounts, many blogs and web sites offer another option for keeping up with their latest updates: web syndication (a.k.a. RSS, feeds, etc.). Updates, in summary format or full text, are output in a digital stream of information to which users can subscribe and read through an application called an aggregator (a.k.a. feed reader). Many sites also stream feeds to your mobile device.

If you're love books and reading, imagine getting the latest in book news from The New York Times, NPR, The New Yorker, The Washington Post, and your favorite book blogs - all in one place. Pretty cool stuff.

Sample feeds
Ask.com News Feeds
BBC News
NPR
New York Times
Yahoo! Finance Feeds

Finding feeds
Look for symbols like these on your favorite sites:
Blogdigger
Syndic8

Sample of available aggregators (require a free account)

Bloglines
Feedreader
Google Reader
My Yahoo! (can be combined with Yahoo! News Alerts)
News Gator

Creating a customized news stream
Sometimes an aggregator can overwhelm you with hundreds of updates. If this happens, see if your aggregator lets you filter results to news that contains certain key words. By selecting the news sources and filtering for key words, you can create a news stream customized to your needs.

If your aggregator does not support filtering, Yahoo! Pipes is a free, web-based tool that provides several options for manipulating your news stream. To get started quickly, clone an existing pipe and tweak it for your needs. Here are two examples of pipes designed to output news from research-based news services that contains certain key words. Note: there is a brief delay after the page loads while the pipe runs to produce its output.

Environmental news
Health news about the brain, learning, or teens