Read national and global news before they are announced by the traditional media. Get those interesting background facts. Read special interest news stories that seldom appear in print. Sure, you read newspapers, watch TV, and listen to radio, but did you know how limited their stories are? Are you content with the same old fires and murders, terrible things that happen day in and day out?
Traditional news media just give you a small part of the news. Their editors are not concerned about YOUR particular interests. They serve a large group of readers, viewers or listeners with different interests in mind.
Go online and discover the difference. Online news has an enormous width and depth. Besides "popular" news, you will find stories that few editors bother to print. This may give you better insight in current developments, and in as much details as you can take.
Balance your news intake between traditional and digital offerings, letting one complement the other. Get your news in whatever format and time frame that suit your needs. Decide what stories are important based on your own interest, and enjoy the feeling of freedom, diversity, and power.
Most commercial online services offer news, and free news is exploding on the Internet. Most stories come from large news agencies and newspapers. Often, you can read and search articles from magazines, newsletters and other special publications.
Although not as convenient to carry as a real newspaper or as easy to watch as the 6 o'clock news, online news is a valuable resource for those whose jobs depend on up-to-date information. The ability to search today and yesterday's news makes it particularly useful.
You can even take it one step further: Access raw news feeds from major world wire services, automatic article-clipping folders, Internet mailing lists, and paperless electronic newsletters. Interact with the digital media as broadcast and print outlets bring their stories, staffers, and the occasional name-in-the-news into the realm of the modem.
The cost of reading a given news item varies by online service. An article that sets you back three cents on one service, may cost two dollars to read on another, or be free on the Internet.
Note: Expect it to be many times more expensive (or cheap) to read the same article from the same news provider on another online service. So, compare prices.
In Norway, we can read local language news from print media like Dagens Naeringsliv, Aftenposten, Kapital, and news wires from NTB and other local sources. Local language news is available online in most countries.
Reading local news on national online services used to be more expensive than on major global online services. As competition among global news providers escalates, this is changing. In addition, many newspapers now offers articles for free on the World Wide Web. Here are some examples:
The Daily Record and Sunday Mail, a Scottish tabloid newspaper based in Glasgow, is at http://www.record-mail.co.uk/rm/. The site offers News, Sport, Features, a Magazine section, Tourism information, Historical Information, Telephone Dating, Competitions, Cartoons, Crossword, Agony Aunt, Picture Gallery and much more.
Aftonbladet (Sweden) is at http://www.aftonbladet.se, and Dagbladet (Norway) at http://www.dagbladet.no/.
For a country by country listing of online newspapers throughout the World, check http://www.webwombat.com.au/intercom/newsprs/. There's a World News Index at http://www.stack.nl/~haroldkl/ with links to daily news providers on the Internet, spanning the entire globe. More links are given below.
My favorite provider of free daily international news top stories is Integrated Newswire's World News section. On the Web, their stories are at http://www.artigen.com/newswire/world.html. This is a selection of headlines dated December 17, 1996:
Boeing merger creates airline superpower Johannesburg Star Zimbabwe earmarks farms for seizure Johannesburg Star Annan to press U.S. on U.N. debt MSNBC World Mother Teresa suffers erratic heartbeat MSNBC World Unions, Courts Deliver Blows to Milosevic Reuters World Several Said Hurt in Attack on Saddam's Son Reuters World Rwandan refugee tide swells CNN World News Amid tensions, Arafat telephones Netanyahu CNN World News
Their offerings also include Information Technology News, Science & Technology News, and Business News.
At Infoseek's News Center (http://www.infoseek.com), you can search for specific names, phrases or words in the past 30 days of news stories from Reuters, Business Wire and PR Newswire. In addition, you can search current headline news as published by Chicago Tribune, CNN, Los Angeles Time, MSNBC, and The New York Times. Click to access the full texts.
You can "Personalize" your news, and have Infoseek deliver only the news that interests you every time you return to the site. Also, you can have news headlines sent you by email.
Once per week, my communications system sends off a message to the WWW by email service at agora@kamakura.mss.co.jp (ref. Chapter 12). The message contains the command
send http://www.mediainfo.com/ephome/news/newshtm/webnews/globarc.htm
After a while, a list of files in the Global Interactive News Briefs Archive arrives in my mailbox. Each brief contains a digest of articles about the Internet printed in media around the world. I return the URL of the most recent news brief to the Agora server to receive the full report.
Some time ago, a well-known Norwegian industrialist visited my office. I showed off online searching in Brainwave for NewsNet newsletters, and stumbled over a story about his company.
"Incredible!" he said. "We have not even announced this to our Norwegian employees yet."
Sometimes, American online services give news from other countries earlier than you can get it on online services from within these countries. Besides, you may prefer stories in English.
Most Norwegians prefer to read news in Norwegian. The Japanese want it in their language, and the French in French. If they can get the news earlier than their competitors, however, most are willing to read English.
Few master many languages. Unless you live in a country where they talk Arabic, Chinese or French, chances are that you cannot read news in these languages. English, however, is a popular second choice in many countries, and it has become the unofficial Esperanto language of the online world.
Reading news translated from another language has its risks. Translators often make mistakes. One common reason is time pressure, another inadequate knowledge of the source language. Their cultural background may prevent them from writing an unbiased shorter version of the source text.
The risk of inaccuracies increases when a story, for example initially translated from Spanish into English, are being translated into a third language.
Avoid news that has been translated more than once, or risk the following type of experience:
On September 19, 1991, Norwegian TV brought news from Moscow.
They told that Russian president Boris Yeltsin had a heart
attack.
The online report from Associated Press, which arrived 7.5
hours earlier, talked about "a minor heart attack" with the
following additional explanation: "In Russian, the phrase
'heart attack' has a broader meaning than in English. It is
commonly used to refer to a range of ailments from chest pains
to actual heart failure."
Still, expect your "personal online daily newspaper" capable of giving you the news faster and more correctly than traditional print media. Some news is only available in electronic form.
On September 19, I called CompuServe to read news and gather information about online news sources.
According to my log, I connected through Infonet in Oslo (see Chapter 13). The total cost for seven minutes was US$6.00, which included the cost of a long distance call to Oslo. (Today, using CompuServe's Standard Pricing Plan, the cost is much less!)
I read some stories, while they scrolled over the screen. All was captured to a file on my hard disk for later study. The size of this file grew to 32.000 characters, or almost 15 single-spaced typewritten pages (A-4 size). If I had spent less time reviewing the lists of available stories, seven minutes would have given a larger file.
Right after having logged on, a menu of stories appeared on my screen. The headline read "News from CompuServe."
The two first items caught my attention, and I requested the text. One had 20 lines about an easier method of finding files in the forum libraries, the other ten lines about writing addresses for international fax messages.
The command GO APV gave me Associated Press News Wires. You will find many similar short-cut tricks in the online services' user manuals. This command produced the following menu:
AP Online APV-1
1 Latest News-Updated Hourly
2 Weather
3 Sports
4 National
5 Washington
6 World
7 Political
8 Entertainment
9 Business News
10 Wall Street
11 Dow Jones Average
12 Feature News
13 Today in History
I entered "9" for business news, and got this list of stories:
AP Online
1 Women, Minority Businesses Lag
2 Child World Accuses Toys R Us
3 UPI May Cancel Worker Benefits
4 Drilling Plan Worries Florida
5 UK Stocks Dip, Tokyo's Higher
6 Dollar Higher, Gold Up
7 Farm Exports Seen Declining
8 Supermarket Coupons Big Bucks
9 Cattlemen Tout Supply, Prices
0 Tokyo Stocks, Dollar Higher
MORE !
The screen stopped scrolling by "MORE !" Pressing ENTER gave a new list. None of them were of any interest.
Pressing M (for previous menu) returned me to the "APV-1" menu. On CompuServe, such videotext page numbers are given in the upper right corner of each menu display. I selected "World" for global news, which gave:
AP Online
6 Two Killed In Nagorno Karabakh
7 Yugoslavia Fighting Rages On
8 Storm Kills Five In Japan
9 Afghan Rebels Going To Moscow?
0 19 Killed in Guatemala Quakes
MORE !8
Oh, a storm in Japan! Interesting. I was due to leave for Japan soon, and entered 8 at the MORE ! prompt to read. My screen was filled with text in a few seconds.
"This is for later study," I thought, pressed M to return to the menu, and then ENTER to get the next listing:
AP Online
1 Bomblets Kill American Troops?
2 No Movement On Hostage Release
3 Baker Plans Return To Syria
4 Baker, King Hussein To Confer
5 Madame Chiang Leaving Taiwan?
6 Baker Leaves Syria for Jordan
7 Klaus Barbie Hospitalized
8 Iraq Denounces U.S. Threat
9 Yelstin Said Resting At Home
0 SS Auschwitz Guard Found Dead
MORE !
Here, I used another trick gleaned from the user manual. Entering "5,6,9" gave me three articles in one batch with no pauses between them. Five screens filled with text. If I had read the menu more carefully, I might also have selected story 0. It looked like an interesting item.
"This is enough the Associated Press," I thought, and typed G NEWS for an overview of all available news sources ("G NEWS" is an abbreviation for "GO NEWS," or "GO to the main NEWS menu"):
News/Weather/Sports NEWS
1 Executive News Service ($)
2 NewsGrid
3 Associated Press Online
4 Weather
5 Sports
6 The Business Wire
7 Newspaper Library
8 UK News/Sports
9 Entertainment News/Info
10 Online Today Daily Edition
11 Soviet Crisis
First, a quick glance at 6, which presented itself in these words: "Throughout the day The Business Wire makes available press releases, news stories, and other information from the world of business. Information on hundreds of different companies is sent daily to The Business Wire's subscribers."
Then choice 7: "This database contains selected full-text stories from 48 newspapers from across the United States. Classified ads are NOT included in the full-text of each paper."
Their list of newspapers included Boston Globe, Chicago Tribune and San Francisco Chronicle. The latter is known for its many inside stories from Silicon Valley.
Choice 8 gave news from England. There, I selected UK News Clips, and received the following menu of news reports:
U.K. News Clips 93 stories selected 1 RTw 09/19 0818 YUGOSLAV AIR FORCE HITS CROATIAN COMMUNICATIONS 2 RTw 09/19 0755 CROATIA BATTLES CONTINUE AS EC PONDERS PEACE FORCE 3 RTw 09/19 0753 ARAB PAPERS SAY MOSCOW WANTS MIDEAST PARLEY DELAYED 4 RTw 09/19 0749 DOLLAR STANDS STILL, SHARES DRIFT LOWER IN ... 5 RTw 09/19 0729 EARNINGS GLOOM REVERSES LONDON STOCKS' EARLY GAINS 6 RTw 09/19 0716 SOVIETS NEED 14.7 BILLION DOLLARS FOOD AID, EC SAYS 7 RTw 09/19 0707 IRA SAYS IT KILLED TIMBER YARD WORKER IN BELFAST DOCKS 8 RTw 09/19 0706 BRITISH CONSERVATIVE CHIEF PLAYS DOWN TALK OF ... 9 RTw 09/19 0630 FINANCE RATES 10 RTw 09/19 0603 REUTER WORLD NEWS SCHEDULE AT 1000 GMT THURSDAY ...
The numbers in column four signify the release times of the stories. The articles are fed continuously from the news wires.
Next stop was the UK Newspaper Library. Here, you can search in full-text stories from The Daily and Sunday Telegraph, Financial Times, The Guardian, UK News. The latter offers selected articles from The Daily & Sunday Telegraph, Financial Times, The Guardian, Today, The Independent, Lloyd's List, The Observer, and The Times/Sunday Times. (The latter two are on the Web at http://www.the-times.co.uk.)
In 1991, the rate for searching the UK Newspaper Library was US$6.00 for up to ten hits. For another US$6.00, I could get a menu with an additional ten stories. The rate was US$6.00 to read the full text of selected stories. These rates were added to CompuServe's normal access rates.
For more about "clipping" of news, check out Chapter 11. This
Chapter is also contains pointers to business related news.
The news service "Soviet Crisis" was my final destination. It was just a few weeks after the attempted coup in Moscow, and I was eager for reports.
OTC NewsAlert had the following interesting story:
OTC 09/19 0750 FIRST ENGLISH LANGUAGE SOVDATA DAILINE IS LAUNCHED
The selection gave three screens with information about a new online service. Briefly, this is what it said:
"The SovData DiaLine service includes an on-line library of more than 250 Soviet newspapers, business and economic periodicals, profiles of more than 2,500 Soviet firms and key executives that do business with the West, legislative reports and other information."
It also said that part of the database was available through LEXIS-NEXIS, and soon through Data-Star, FT Profile (http://www.ft.com), Reuters, Westlaw, and GBI. Undoubtedly, the name has changed by now.
Finally, a fresh story about the fate of the KGB. I read another fifty lines, entered OFF (for "goodbye CompuServe"), and received the following verdict:
Thank you for using CompuServe!
Off at 09:03 EDT 19-Sep-91
Connect time = 0:07
Seven minutes. Fifteen typed pages of text. US$6.00. Not bad!
I assume that your "daily online newspaper" will contain other stories. If you are on the Internet, consider signing up with Clarinet, an electronic publishing network service that provides commercial news and information, including live UPI wire service news (http://www.upi.com).
ClariNet provides general, international, sports, technology, entertainment and professional financial news, as well as special features and columns. It offers over 1,000 current articles per day, sorted into 250+ groups, in their full length and original versions.
On Usenet, ClariNet gateways newsgroups like:
clari.feature Feature columns and products
clari.biz.economy Economic news and indicators
clari.biz.industry Groups for various industries
clari.biz.world_trade GATT, Free Trade, Trade Disputes
clari.tw.top Top Technical Stories
A feed of ClariNet news is available for a fee and execution of a license. their e.News Web page (http://www.clari.net) presents a menued structure of ClariNet's 300 news categories via hypertext links. Capsulated current news summaries are available free to visitors. These "tearsheets" are excerpts from the top 10 news stories selected from the 1,000 or more stories run daily in the e.News.
NewsPage provides commercial news at http://www.newspage.com. With more than 25,000 pages refreshed daily, over 2,500 topic areas broken down into 240 categories within more than 20 industries, it covers a lot of ground. They claim receipt of up to 20,000 news stories each day from over 700 English language sources - newspapers, magazines, trade weeklies, newsletters, news, and press release wires. (October 1996)
You can read preselected news by topic area, or create your own "individualized" issue based on your own keywords.
NewsPage's sources include the following international titles: Newsbytes, Advertising Age International, Euromarketing, Inter Press Service, ITAR/TASS, Lloyd's List, Korea Economic Daily, Kyodo News International, Network World, Nikkei English News, OPEC News Agency, Reuter Business Report, Reuter E.C. Report, Reuter European Business Report, Reuters Asia Pacific Business Report, Traffic World, Xinhua News Agency, Agence France Presse, Asian Aviation News, BioWorld Today, BioWorld Weekly, Business China, Business Eastern Europe, Business Europe, Business Latin America, European Media Business & Finance, International Banking Regulator, International Petroleum Finance, Japan Chemical Week, PHARMA Japan, Reuter Corporate World News, Reuter Energy Report, Reuter Money News Service, Reuter Transcript Report, Reuter World News Service, World Airline News, World Airport Week, World Gas Intelligence.
Reading article abstracts is free. By paying a symbolic subscription fee, you get access to the full texts. Individual Inc., the people behind Newspage, offers a Japanese language NewsWatch service in cooperation with Toshiba and Mitsui.
For general news, start with major newswires, like Associated Press, Agence France-Presse, Xinhua, Reuters, and the like. They are available on many commercial services including CompuServe, and Dialog.
You'll find pointers to broadcasting sources of news in many languages at http://www.it-kompetens.com/broad.html.
Choices include BBS, Channel 4 (United Kingdom), Deutsche Welle (Germany), Teletekst from NOS (Holland), Scandinavian broadcasters, Community Broadcasting Association of Australia, CBS, Radio Japan, the Internet Multicasting Service, US-based radio stations, CPB and NPR (USA), Radio Canada, Radio France, Radio and TV schedules from Finland, and more.
News Index (http://www.newsindex.com/) is a news only search engine. It indexes current articles from hundreds of sources from around the world. It is not an archive, but a resource for finding more information on current topics you are interested in.Use it to read different versions of a story, and hopefully derive some semblance of what actually occurred. Use it to find multiple sources if your first choice want to charge you for reading it.
By following a large number of papers, you can follow ongoing stories as they happen. Use it to monitor what goes on within a topic of interest. Search for a topic by submitting keywords. Hits containing all keywords are listed first. Click on the link to get an article's text.
Here are some other search engines focusing on today's news:
NewsBot http://www.wired.com/newbot/ NewsWorks http://www.newsworks.com/ NewsBot http://www.newsbot.com/ NewsTracker http://nt.excite.com/ Wisewire http://www.wisewire.com/ TotalNews http://www.totalnews.com/
NewsTrawler (at http://www.newstrawler.com/) is a meta search engine that lets you search in parallel hundreds of news archives on the web. The collection includes news, magazine and journal sources from a broad range of countries.
Note: While the search for information itself is free, a number of news resources provide free summaries but charge for the full retrieval of information.
For free daily news about the Web, NewsLinx - Daily Web News - is a favorite. Check http://newslinx.com/ to see why. The page for May 3, 1996, simply started like this:
, Full Speed Ahead For The Internet (c|net)
, Can't Sell Famous Web Names" (Boston Globe)
, Gates Says Don't Worry About Web Jambs (News Tribune)
, Pointcast Network Hot (Chicago Tribune)
, Create Web Pages With "Liquid Motion" (Web Review)
, Web Connects Siblings (Boston Globe)
, Job Searching On The Web Becoming Standard (Detroit News)
, Germany Plans Minor Net Regs (Reuters)
, Computer Checkup Via Web (Interactive Age)
, Strange Unibomber Site (Web Review)
Click on a title to get the full text.
NewsLinx features links to stories culled from the mainstream press, with an update posted each business day. Although there are many business or technology listings on the Web, this service provides links to the best stories, a simple one page interface, and focus exclusively on the Web.
C|Net's NEWS.COM (http://www.news.com) is another fine source for this kind of news, as is The New York Times' Computer News Daily section (at http://computernewsdaily.com/). NEWS.COM is divided into several sections, and focuses on products and services being developed for the Internet, stories on hardware and systems, Intranets, and technology business news. A free electronic newsletter is also available.
NewsPage (http://www.newspage.com) offers commercial news within these categories
Computer Hardware & Peripherals Computer Hardware & Peripherals Computer Software Computer Software Computer Professional Services Computer Professional Services Data Communications Data Communications Interactive Media & Multimedia Interactive Media & Multimedia Semiconductors Semiconductors Telecommunications
If you are into computers, you owe it to yourself to check out Newsbytes. This service offers global headline news from bureaus around the world. The stories are sorted in sections with names like IBM, UNIX, Government, Telecom, Trends, Business, Apple, Personal Computers, DOS, Windows, Pen, Networks, General, Education, Health, Online, Broadcast, Legal, Personal Digital Assistant, Chips, Super Computers. A favorite!
The IM Europe Newsdesk provides links to news originating within the EU on information markets, multimedia, the information society, and information and communication technologies. The site (http://www.echo.lu/news/) can be accessed in English, French, and German.
After some time, your definition of the notion "news" may change. Since so many conferences are also interesting sources, they should also be a part of your news gathering strategy. Check in regularly to read what members say about what they have seen, done, heard, or discovered.
Professional news reporters have also discovered this. Online conferences are popular hunting grounds for writers of the traditional press.
FidoNet has many conferences with specialized news contents, including:
ANEWS News of the US and World
BBNS BBS News Service
BIONEWS Environmental News
Many CompuServe forums have news sections. If you are into Hot News and Rumors about Amiga Computers, read messages in section 3 of the Amiga Tech Forum.
Consumer Electronics Forum has the section "New Products/News." The Journalist Forum has "Fast Breaking News!" The Motor Sports Forum has "Racing News/Notes." The Online Today Forum has "In the News."
Below, we have therefore combined the traditional news providers with conferences to provide some interesting sources sorted by part of the world:
Editor & Publisher Interactive collects data on just about every online newspaper in the world. As of April 23, 1998, their database had 2,859 online newspaper entries. For access, click on newspapers at http://www.mediainfo.com/emedia/. Here, you can list papers by continent by clicking on an Interactive World Map. You can full text search to locate individual online publications or list papers by country.
There's a competing service in the United States called HomeTown Free-Press (at http://www.GoThere.com/hometown.htm). It offers over 1,500 links to free local news and information sites in Africa, Antarctica, Asia, Australia and New Zealand, Eastern and Western Europe, Middle East, North, South and Central America, West Indies (March 1996). Sites include newspapers, radio and television stations, schools, civic and civil organizations.
WRAL-TV5 (http://www.wral-tv.com/news/international/) delivers free international news via continuous feeds from Reuters, Associated Press and The Sports Network.
United Nations Daily Highlights: http://www.un.org/News/dh/latest.htm.
Finally, check out http://sun.bucknell.edu/~boulter/crayon/ for the free "CReAting Your Own Newspaper" (CRAYON) service. Mark off your selected batch of information sources, and have a customized newspaper delivered to you.
Usenet has (Validation required for access to Clarinet):
clari.world.africa.south_africa
News from South Africa.
clari.world.africa News from other African countries.
clari.world.mideast Also covers news on Egypt.
PeaceNet's World News Service offers six digests on Africa, covering different regions of the continent, with coverage from the Inter Press Service (IPS):
Africa - General Overview of the Entire Continent Southern Africa - Kalahari, Cape and Islands West Africa - Niger Basin West Central Africa - Congo-Logone North Africa - Maghreb and Niles Eastern Africa News - Rift Valley and Red Sea
IPS' writers are all local people covering the areas in which they live, and their articles appear three days after copyright. Other sources include the Pacific News Service, the United Nation Information Centre, Third World Network Features, PeaceNet and EcoNet.
For a list of digests (including other regions and worldwide coverage of specific issues), prices and instructions about getting a free one month trial subscription, write to pwn-info@igc.org.
Somalia News Update is irregularly published out of Sweden. Email to: bernhard.helander@antro.uu.se.Subject: Somalia request. Body: Ask nicely. TSSNEWS (on listserv@psuvm.psu.edu) brings news of the Tunisian Scientific Society.
The Weekly Mail & Guardian (Johannesburg, South Africa) offers news by email. Write wmail-info@wmail.misanet.org for subscription information, or look it up on the Web (http://www.mg.co.za/mg/). A one year subscription costs $100.
The searchable Weekly Mail & Guardian news archive goes back to July of 1994. (At http://wn.apc.org/wmail/issues/. Registration required.)
Zambia's controversial newspaper, The Post in Lusaka, has a full online service at http://www.zamnet.zm/zamnet/post/post.html.
See http://www.met.fu-berlin.de/english/Wetter/index.html#europe for European and World weather information including pictures.
ZAMNET provides links to the Africa Information Afrique News Archive. The archive contains articles from Angola, Botswana, Lesotho, Mozambique, Malawi, Namibia, SADC, South Africa, Swaziland, Tanzania, Zambia, and Zimbabwe published over several years. gopher://lechwe.zamnet.zm/11/News
China Daily On the Web (http://www.chinadaily.net/cndy/cd_cate1.html) delivers English language news from China under the headings Top News; Home News; China Business; World Business; Money; Opinion; Sport; Feature; World News.
CND (China News Digest) is a voluntary non-profit organization aiming at providing news and other information services about China-related affairs. All CND services are free of charge. Back Issues of the China News Digest are at http://www.cnd.org.
CND's English language publications include CND-Global (three issues per week), CND-US (one issue per week), CND-Canada (one issue per week), CND- Europe/Pacific (one issue per week), CND-China (two issues per month).
China News Service & Agency (http://www.chinanews.com/) offers daily business news from China, Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan to subscribers.
The Ta Kung Pao Chinese Daily has daily coverage of news about China and Hong Kong in Chinese (http://www.enmpc.org.hk/takungpao/). Requires Big5 or GuoBiao software to read.
Usenet has
clari.world.asia.china News of China clari.world.asia.hong_kong News of Hong Kong. talk.politics.china Discussion of political issues related to China.
Japan Press Network (http://www.jpn.co.jp/) provides the latest news covering Japan's high-tech industries as well as finance, economics and the Japanese press.
Usenet has clari.world.asia.japan (News of Japan). Also, see PeaceNet's World News Service above. (Validation required for access to Clarinet.)
Nikkei (on FP Profile) has an English language service with news articles from Nikkei and other Japanese newspapers.
The Middle East News Network publishes daily news, analysis and comments from 19 countries in the Middle East produced by Arabic, Hebrew, Turkish and Persian press. You can read these news through Reuters (for example, on NewsGrid/CompuServe), Down Jones News/Retrieval, and Information Access.
Usenet has
clari.world.mideast News from the Middle East. Includes Lebanon,
Jordan, Syria, Cyprus, Kuwait, Afghanistan.
clari.world.mideast.arabia Saudi Arabia and the other nations of
the Arabian Peninsula (Qatar, the United
Arab Emirates, Yemen, Oman, and Bahrain).
clari.world.mideast.iran News of Iran
clari.world.mideast.iraq News of Iraq
clari.world.mideast.israel News of Israel
clari.world.mideast.turkey News of Turkey. (Validation required for
access to Clarinet.)
Arabnet (http://www.countrylink.com/) brings up to the minute Arabic news in Arabic characters.
For uncensored (by the Israeli) Palestinian news, check the Birzeit University site (http://www.birzeit.edu/palnews/war).
For interesting links to sources of political, social and economic news about mainland China, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Tibet, check
http://freenet.buffalo.edu/~cb863/china.html
PeaceNet's World News Service has a Southeast Asia digest. It includes coverage from the Inter Press Service (IPS) on Vietnam, Thailand, Hong Kong, Japan, Cambodia, Korea, Philippines, Taiwan, The People's Republic of China, Malaysia and the region as a whole. (Email: pwn-info@igc.org)
The Star, Malaysia's leading English-language daily newspaper, brings its news at http://www.jaring.my/~star/. Singapore's Straits Times is at http://straitstimes.asia1.com/.
The BERITA-L list (on listserv@postoffice.cso.uiuc.edu) carries news (only) about Malaysia, Singapore, Islam, and of other ASEAN countries when of interest to Malaysians or Singaporeans. Since the topics are somewhat unrelated, MY, SG and IS topics have been set up so subscribers can avoid uninteresting postings (selective reading).
Some mailing lists bring a steady flow of news from various sources. SEASIA-L - The Southeast Asia Discussion List (at listserv@msu.edu) - is one example. it is "designed to facilitate communication between researchers, scholars, students, teachers, and others interested in Southeast Asian studies with an emphasis on current events."
SEASIA-L defines Southeast Asia loosely as Burma/Myanmar across to Hong Kong and down through Australia and New Zealand. Regularly, it brings full- text news stories from Inter Press Service, regional news agencies, and newspapers/radio. Some examples:
On Jul. 30, 1992, a full-text story from IPS: "PHILIPPINES: RAMOS URGES REPEAL OF ANTI-COMMUNIST LAW." On Aug. 13, 1992, full-text story from The New Straits Times (Singapore): "Schoolgirls involved in flesh trade, says Farid." On Aug. 31, "ANTI-VIETNAMESE FORCE TURNS UP IN CAMBODIA" (Reuter).
SEASIA-L also brings "underground" reports like "The Burma Focus," a bimonthly newsletter published by the All Burma Students' Democratic Front.
The INDIA-L mailing list (on listserv@indnet.org) is The India News Network, while PAKISTAN (on listserv@asuvm.inre.asu.edu) is the Pakistan News Service.
Usenet has
clari.world.asia.india News of India. (Validation required for access
to Clarinet.)
alt.india.progressive Progressive politics in the Indian sub-continent.
soc.culture.bangladesh Issues & discussion about Bangladesh.
clari.world.asia.south News of South Asia, including Pakistan,
Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Afghanistan, Bhutan,
Nepal, and Myanmar.
misc.news.southasia News from Bangladesh, India, Nepal, etc.
bit.listserv.pakistan Pakistan News Service.
bit.listserv.pns-l Pakistan News Service Discussions.
clari.world.asia.koreas News of North and South Korea.
alt.culture.indonesia Indonesian culture, news, etc.
bit.listserv.seasia-l Southeast Asia Discussion List.
clari.world.asia.southeast News of Southeast Asia, including Vietnam,
Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, Singapore, Malaysia,
Indonesia, Brunei, and the Philippines.
clari.world.asia.central News of the Asian former Soviet republics:
Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Georgia,
Kirghizistan, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Tadzhikistan.
clari.world.oceania News of the Pacific Islands and Papua New Guinea
clari.world.oceania.australia News of Australia
clari.world.oceania.new_zealand News of New Zealand
Request subscription to a Bangladesh News Digest by sending an email to dwright@metz.une.edu.au. The Hindu, a national Indian newspaper, is experimenting with an online edition at http://www.webpage.com/hindu. IndoLink, an interesting source of Indian news, information, articles, is at:
http://www.genius.net/indolink/index.html
PeaceNet's World News Service has a Latin America and the Caribbean digest with coverage from IPS. The America Latina digest is the Spanish language equivalent. The digests feature regular news from sources like La Agencia Latinoamericana de Informacio'n (ALAI), Third World Network's Revista del Sur, and Tercer Mundo Econo'mico. (Email: pwn-info@igc.org)
Usenet has
clari.world.americas News on the Americas, usually outside the USA
and Canada. (Validation required for access to
Clarinet.)
clari.world.americas.caribbean News of the island nations of the
Caribbean, including Cuba, Haiti, the Dominican
Republic, and Jamaica.
clari.world.americas.mexico News of Mexico.
clari.world.americas.central News of Central America: Panama,
Nicaragua, Honduras, Costa Rica, El Salvador,
Guatemala, and Belize.
clari.world.americas.south News of South America.
A selection of current news articles about and concerning Peru from foreign newspapers and magazines is distributed by listasrcp@rcp.net.pe. Subscribe by sending the command "add NOTICIAS you-email-address." Sample news items are available at http://www3.rcp.net.pe/rcp/rcp-noti.html.
News from Cuba, Latin America, the Caribbean and Africa is available daily from Radio Havana, Cuba. Email: radiohc@tinored.cu. El Tiempo (Colombia) is at http://www.eltiempo.com/. There's another source of news as seen from a Cuban perspective at http://www.netpoint.net/~cubanet. Text is in Spanish and English.
Start by visiting Editor & Publisher for European daily news and weather. Here are links to Radio Amsterdam, Deutsche Welle, Der Spiegel, L'Unione Sarda (Italy), RTI (Ireland), Baltic News Service, The Vogon News Service (target is British ex-patriots) and The Electronic Telegraph in United Kingdom, Bulgarian news, Croatian Radio News, Danske nyheder (Denmark), Gazeta Wyborcza on-line (Poland), and much more. You can search the Guardian OnLine Archives in England at the following Web address: http://www.cityscape.co.uk/cgi-bin/kidofwais.pl, and the Economist is at http://www.economist.com/.
For a peek at El Periódico de Catalunya (Spain), point your browser at http://www.elperiodico.es.
The Austrian "Wiener Zeitung" claims to be the oldest existing daily newspaper in the world (neary 300 years old). Its Web page covers domestic and world news in German, general information about Austria's government, the house of parliament, the president, articles from the weekly computer page, and the Friday supplement, reviews of books, records and cultural events, a chess page, and more. (http://www.oesd.co.at/wz/wz.htm)
A daily news bulletin from Radio Prague (Czech Republic) is available by email from cr@radio.cz. Select language by sending the commands 'subscribe English' or 'subscribe Czech'. A weekly review of the Czech press prepared by journalism students at Charles university is at listserv@earn.cvut.cz. Subscribe by mail using the command 'sub car-eng firstname lastname' (for the English language version).
For more English language daily news covering the Baltic countries, check Editor & Publisher.
The Dutch language Internet newspaper InterNetKrant brings news from the Netherlands at http://www.es.ele.tue.nl/ink/#english.
News about Flanders and Belgium Dutch is available from Rijksuniversiteit Gent (in Dutch). For information about how to subscribe, send an empty mail message to msr@elis.rug.ac.be, with the word HELP in the subject line.
You may also want to try the News, Magazines & Information Servers page at
http://www.wb.utwente.nl/explore/news_main.html
Der Spiegel (Germany) is at: http://www.spiegel.de.
Usenet has (Validation required for access to Clarinet):
clari.world.europe.benelux News of Belgium, the Netherlands, and
Luxembourg.
clari.world.europe.alpine News of Austria, Switzerland, and
Liechtenstein
clari.world.europe.france News of France and Monaco.
clari.world.europe.germany News of Germany.
clari.world.europe.greece News of Greece.
clari.world.europe.iberia News of Spain, Portugal, and Andorra.
clari.world.europe.ireland News of the Republic of Ireland.
clari.world.europe.italy News of Italy and San Marino.
clari.world.europe.northern News of Norway, Sweden, Denmark,
Finland, and Iceland.
clari.world.europe.union News about the European Union: the European
bureaucracy, the European Parliament, and
other EU institutions.
The HELLENIC NEWS database is at http://www.greeknews.ariadne-t.gr/. For a page with Greek newspapers, try http://www.spark.net.gr/perip_e.html.
On the IRL-POL mailing list on listserv@listserv.hea.ie, members discuss current Irish politics.
Dow Jones Interactive offers full text from Wall Street Journal Europe, Agence France-Presse, the Paris-based International Herald Tribune, the Guardian, and others from the United Kingdom.
Need newspapers in other languages than English? LEXIS-NEXIS carries Le Monde (in French), Suddeutsche Zeitung (in German), and La Stampa (in Italian). They have The Agence France-Presse wire service in French.
GBI (tel: +49 89 957 0064) has an extensive full text coverage of the German press. The offerings include the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, the Neue Zürcher Zeitung, and tageszeitung from Berlin.
The Vatican Radio is at http://www.wrn.org/vatican-radio/, and The Radio Vaticana Kurznachrichten (in German) at http://www.kath.de/rv/. More links to international broadcasters: http://www.wrn.org/stations.html.
The NORWAVES mailing list distributes digested news from Norway ( English). Subscribe by email to listserv@nki.no using the command "SUBSCRIBE NORWAVES Your Name". Web address: http://www.nki.no/~morten/norwaves.html
If you know French, check out Frognet, a service of the French embassy in Washington. In their own words, this is what it is all about (sorry for the missing accents!):
Frognet est le Club des francais et francophones residents hors de France sur Internet. L'inscription au Club, vous permet de recevoir chaque jour ouvrable le journal de RFI (Radio France Internationale). Ce journal est libre de tout droit d'auteur. Sa large diffusion est autorisee et meme encouragee, et ce a tous les niveaux.
Subscribe to FROGNET by email to listproc@list.cren.net. By the way, FROG is an abbreviation for the French Researcher Organization... But there is more! Also check out the Francopholistes l'annuaire des listes de diffusion francophones page at http://www.cru.fr/listes/.
There's an abundance of online news sources covering North America. We are therefor just including a few pointers here, like
The Wall Street Journal - http://wsj.com
The Washington Post - http://www.washingtonpost.com
USA Today - http://www.usatoday.com
Los Angeles Times - http://www.latimes.com
Newslink (http://www.newslink.org) offers links to many U.S. newspapers, broadcast networks and affiliates, magazines and publishers, and sites of special journalistic interest on the World Wide Web.
Automatic background information on this service is available by sending any sort of email to info@newslink.org.
Check out Editor & Publisher for more.
Press Rover (http://www.russianstory.com/rover/) offers free full text search of an archive of Russian newspapers and periodicals. Your search may be limited to the following areas: Government & Society, Business & Economy, Culture & Arts, and Family & Entertainment. Payment is required for document retrieval only.
At http://users.aimnet.com/~ksyrah/ekskurs/rusnews.html, there's a Russian News Links page with links to Federal News Service, Izvestia, ITAR- TASS, InterFax/Maximov, Nezavisimaya gazeta, Pravda-5, and an extensive list of other Russian newspapers and magazines on the Internet, including audio radio resources.
This Web page also have good coverage of other NIS countries, including Ukraine, Belarus, Armenia, Georgia, Kirghizistan, Azerbaijan, The Baltics.
PeaceNet's World News Service offers an Eastern Europe (including Russia and the CIS) digest with coverage from the Inter Press Service (IPS). For information, contact pwn-info@igc.org.
The Jamestown Foundation publishes The Monitor, a daily digest of news reports from Russia and other former Soviet republics. Information: http://www.jamestown.org.
Latest news from Eastern Europe, Russia, the Caucasus and Central Asia is available from Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (http://www.rferl.org/). In addition to news briefs, RFE/RL offers features, analysis, special reports, and press reviews. Countries covered include Azerbaijan, Belarus, Bulgaria, Estonia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kirgistan, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Russia, Slovakia, South Slavic, Tajikistan, Tatar-Bashkir, Turkmenistan, Ukraine, and Uzbekistan.
Several Russian newspapers, including Commersant Daily, Nega, and press services like Postfactum and Interfax, have digests or complete editions available for Relcom network subscribers, usually for a nominal fee.
A hypertext, English-language version of the St. Petersburg Press weekly is at http://www.spb.su/. This Web page also offers Severo-Zapad, a daily news source for information about northwest Russia.
INCO (Moscow), in cooperation with the East-West Project, Institute of Central/East European and Russian Area Studies, Carleton University (Canada), publish the ANALYTICA MOSCOW: Politica Weekly Press Summary newsletter. The January 7-13, 1995 was about 30 Kb, and had the following contents:
1. Government of National Revival formed in Chechnya
2. Chechnya War
3. Political Institutions
4. Political Figures
5. Foreign Relations
6. Dossier:
a) Background of newly-appointed Minister of Justice,
Valentin Kovalev
b) The State Committee on the Military-technical Policy of the
Russian Federation
Contact: inco@glas.apc.org.
GlasNews (U.S.A.) is a quarterly publication on East-West contacts in all aspects of communications - including journalism, telecommunications, photography, opinion research, advertising and public relations. At:
http://solar.rtd.utk.edu/~aboyle/glasnews/master.html
The Russian Press Electronic Courier newsletter brings free digests of news titles from media throughout Russia and the other CIS countries (Ukraine, Byelorussia, the Baltic States, the Trans-Caucasus and Central Asia). Covers Political events; business and culture; ethnic conflicts and peace negotiations; political and public organizations; elections and appointments; polls and statistical reports; and other topics.
Subscribe to RPEC by email to listproc@solar.rtd.utk.edu. Put the command "Subscribe RPEC Your Name" in the body of your mail. A topical monitoring and clipping service is also available in English and/or Russian. For more information, contact wps@ic.redline.ru.
For a fee, East View Publications (http://www.eastview.com/) offers searchable databases of articles from the daily Russian newspapers Nezavisimaya Gazeta and Sevodnya.
Usenet has (Validation required for access to Clarinet):
clari.world.europe.balkans News of the former Yugoslavia, Romania,
and Bulgaria
alt.current-events.bosnia The strife of Bosnia-Herzegovina.
soc.culture.bosna-herzgvna
alt.news.macedonia News of Macedonia in the Balkan Region.
clari.world.europe.central News of Poland, the Czech Republic,
Slovakia, and Hungary.
clari.local.georgia Local news.
alt.current-events.ukraine Current and fast paced Ukrainian events.
clari.world.europe.russia News of Russia.
relcom.bbs.list Lists of Russian-language BBSes.
talk.politics.soviet Discussion of Soviet politics, domestic
and foreign.
English-language news from Croatia (ex-Yugoslavia) is available at http://www.carnet.hr/news/media_eng.html.
UUCP has a service which brings regular news bulletins from Poland (Contact: przemek@ndcvx.cc.nd.edu).
BosNet distributes information relevant to the events in/about Republic of Bosnia-Hercegovina. Daily posting typically consists of newsbriefs compiled from reports by UPI, RFE/RL, NYT, Reuter, as well as other sources, such as: LA, SF, Chicago dailies; WP, WSJ, The Economist, White House, New Republic, Boston Globe, various Ministry Reports, FPB, etc. Information at http://www.balkaninstitute.org/. You can also find it on Usenet as bit.listserv.bosnet.
CET-ONLINE is a free daily English language news service produced by Central Europe Today. It features political, economic and business news as well as feature stories that chronicle the living and working environment in Central Europe. Subscribe by email to cet-online-request@eunet.cz by putting the command SUBSCRIBE in the body of your mail.
DJNR offers full text from Soviet Press Digest, Moscow News, and others.
Freedom Press (http://www.lglobal.com/TAO/Freedom/) is the world's oldest anarchist publishing group (founded in 1886). The FPI mailing list (on majordomo@tao.ca) sends extracts from their publications with an emphasis on news.