Bill Stoller of Publicity Insider mentioned an Alternative to Costly Press Clipping Services called Clip & Copy, a free on-line news clipping service, that automatically scans over 300 publications to find keywords, names and phrases which you pre-designate.

When Clip & Copy finds a news story that meets your criteria, it grabs the headline and creates a summary of the story.

This service is free, as are Google News Alerts. I asked Bill about the difference between the two, to which he said:

"Neither are all encompassing - GNR misses a ton of placements.

I'd advise using both - one might pick up what the other misses - they're both free !"

I personally use both to keep up on our publicity for the company and also to keep up on topics in the industry, by keyword