Are Faculty Overemphasizing the Use of Peer Reviewed Sources?

I am beginning to wonder if faculty are overemphasizing “peer reviewed journals” when giving assignments to students. I taught an environmental science class where the students were asked to find information about the Keystone Pipeline which is a system to transport synthetic crude oil and diluted bitumen from the Athabasca Oil Sands in northeastern Alberta, Canada to multiple destinations in the United States. This is a topic in the news which has not been discussed yet in academic journals. I advised students to search Lexis-Nexis to find articles in reputable magazines on this topic.

Likewise today a student approached me asking for peer reviewed information about the New Jersey Energy Master Plan which was released by Governor Christie in late 2011. Similarly, this is not a topic in journal articles. I found some good newspaper articles from Lexis-Nexis. A Google search yielded a good analysis written at Rutgers University. Sometimes a Google search will yield appropriate documents. We shouldn’t “demonize” Google searching all of the time.