1 USA Today

For an update on what’s happening in the USA today, try the newssources listed at Media Link (www.kidon.com/media-link/index.shtml), E&P Media Links (http://emedia1.mediainfo.com/emedia/) or Newspapers Online (www.newspapers.com/index.htm). The first two of these allow you to search for news links per country or even state, with E&P Media Links offering the more extensive search options. Newspaper Online lists newspapers and magazines per category or per country.
 
 

1.1 Quick Links to Belgian News Sources

Among Belgian newspapers, De Morgen (www.demorgen.be) and De Standaard (www.standaard.be/nieuws/buitenland/index.asp) are generally recognized as leading quality papers. For more Belgian (and Dutch) newspapers, you can have a look at www.kranten.com/index_be.html?s=landelijk. De Financieel Economische Tijd is specialized in financial news (www.tijd.be/nlindex.ihtm) and the weekly magazine Knack (www.knack.be) combines popularity with quality. For more printed news resources in Belgium you can check Newspapers Online (www.newspapers.com/index.htm).

The central website of the Belgian broadcasting corporation for the Flemish community (VRT) is www.vrt.be. Daily news can be consulted via the online version of its teletext service at http://www.tv1.be/tt/tt.php?p=100&g=1&s=0&r=0&x=1. The main commercial broadcasting corporation VTM (www.vtm.be) likewise offers teletext online (http://text.vtm.be/tt1/tt.php3?&p=101/0&s=0&r=0&R=0).

Finally, if you want to be your own newsmaker, you can try the Belgian news agency Belga at www.uunet.be/belganews/.
 
 

1.2 Quick Links to British News Sources

1.2.1 UK Newspapers

Of the leading UK newspapers, the electronic counterpart of The Times presumably has the least additional value offering basically an electronic transcript of the printed publication (www.the-times.co.uk). The Independent certainly offers a more handsome website (www.independent.co.uk), and The Guardian and its more popular counterpart The Observer include a wealth of special features, including audio reports, in their Guardian Unlimited Network (www.guardian.co.uk and www.observer.co.uk).

1.2.2 UK Magazines

If we may believe the New York Observer as quoted on http://www.spectator.co.uk/home.html, "British magazines are awful. (The Spectator excepted.)" The Spectator may proud itself on being the oldest continuously published British magazine – its origins dating back as far as 1828 – its print version must needs be complemented by an electronic one in this day and age. Opinions, reviews and cartoons by leading columnists, critics and cartoonists are to be had from it.

"Awful" as economy may be, essential information in this domain can be accessed via the website of The Economist (www.economist.com), along with more general news viewed from the economic angle.

1.2.3 UK News Agencies

The virtual news agency Ananova Limited (www.ananova.com) is not the regular sort of news agency, providing as it does news for web sites rather than for newspapers, radio and television. It is not only decidedly modern in this respect, though: it also boasts the world's first virtual newscaster, aptly called Ananova. You will need a recent version of RealPlayer (www.realplayer.com) to watch the online Ananova-news. Another interesting feature is the possibility to sign up for e-mail alerts on a number of selected topics that are currently of public interest, or for alerts covering more general areas such as news, entertainment, sports and the like.

1.2.4 UK Broadcasting

Arguably one of the most essential online news resources around, BBC news coverage at http://news.bbc.co.uk/ will certainly offer the latest in US-related news as in other domains. Not only is it kept brilliantly up-to-date, it also includes the perks that come with modern multimedia, such as audio and video coverage.

1.3 Quick Links to American News Sources

1.3.1 US Newspapers

Why not have a look at USA's newspapers for news on and from the USA? Whether it's The Boston Globe (www.boston.com/globe/), The Los Angeles or New York Times (www.latimes.com and www.nytimes.com), The Chicago Tribune (www.chicagotribune.com) or The Washington Post (www.washingtonpost.com), they all include under one form or other a substantial 'national' section. If you want to be kept up-to-date by your favourite newspaper, you can have newsletters sent to you by e-mail. A nice included option with the LA Times is the on-site Print button in the top right corner of a news story, allowing you to print the story directly. On a less positive note, perhaps, the online Chicago Tribune seems to allot its classifieds section a slightly too prominent place on its opening page. Likewise, the balance between general news and sports on its opening page seems rather disturbed.

As with the other online newspapers, USA Today (www.usatoday.com) offers a national section, with the added feature of clicking the US state you want to read news about (http://www.usatoday.com/news/states/ns1.htm). Of all the American newspaper sites mentioned so far, USA Today's site presumably has the most 'interactive' feel about it, including the necessary technology to e-mail the news story you are reading directly from the website, the possibility to listen to the latest news from Associated Press from its site, and an extensive 'news community', if you will, offering not only forums for discussion but also regular chat sessions ('The Nation Talks' at http://www.usatoday.com/community/mb/index.htm).

For news brought to you from New York City, you can read the online Greenwich Village Gazette at www.gvny.com. The best way to find your way through this somewhat disorderly website is via the contents page, at the time of our visit apparently only available through the link to 'Page 3' via the 'Page 2' link from the main page (or just click http://www.nycny.com/page3.html). Among the features that complement the articles and columns are articles on selected historical topics (e.g. The Beats) and a so-called 'interactive' section, an overstatement for a number of RealAudio and RealVideo broadcasts – listen to Marilyn Monroe singing Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend, to Jack Kerouac reading poetry, or to the opinion of New York citizens on current events. Not all of the videos seemed to work, however.

Among America's best newspapers, The Christian Science Monitor (www.csmonitor.com) boasts perhaps the best website. Apart from giving access to today's newspaper articles (which you can send by e-mail) and offering search facilities for its archive, it offers a separate section devoted to 'cybercoverage' and a wealth of interesting sections and special features. Among the former, such sections as "Ideas" devoted to "Currents in contemporary thought", and "Commentary" including essays and opinions. To enjoy some of the marvellous websites developed for special occasions, try the Special Features page where you find sections on Pulitzer Prize Coverage, The Oscars, Black History, Poetry, Centenarians and many more. An entire website was built for reports and essays on the turn of the millennium (http://www.csmonitor.com/atcsmonitor/specials/athousandyears/index.html), with in-depth essays and animations on a wide variety of topics – population, the environment, arts and entertainment, education, work and money, and so on. You will need Shockwave Flash to enjoy this clever site. Last but not least, the electronic edition of the CS Monitor gives access to the best online discussion forum we've seen so far (http://www.csmonitor.com/monitortalk) – well-structured, easy to navigate and provided with welcome features such as the ability to print or e-mail messages directly from the online forum.

From the starting page of the Financial Times (news.ft.com) you can opt between the Global, UK or US edition. Choosing the US section using the easy-to-use pop-down menus from any of these editions, you reach the US section including some sections that wouldn't look bad on the British Spectator's site: discussion forums and columnists (http://news.ft.com/news/worldnews/us).

1.3.2 US Magazines

Thanks to their international editions, Time and Newsweek are well-known magazines not only in the US, but all over the globe. Their respective websites (www.time.com and www.newsweek.com) both offer such interactive features as live chats (and transcript archives), online polls and special features that are only published on the online version (called 'Web Features' with Time, 'Web Exclusives' with Newsweek). Time's Web Features includes Time's list of the Time 100 – the one hundred most influential people of the 20th century – the so-called Visions of the 21st Century, and more. Time's online articles have a useful 'Save this article' button at the end. A special subsite Time for Kids (www.timeforkids.com) aims at catering for childrens' need for news and entertainment, adding to it a parents' and a teachers' section. Surfing to the Newsweek website effectively takes you to a double website: the navigation bar on the left hand side is that of the MSNBC web empire, that on the right hand side is that of Newsweek magazine itself. Activating the sleek navigation menu of the MSNBC part requires a small download and includes, in its News submenu, a number of Newsweek menus. Via a system of local affiliates, the MSNBC website is able to offer local news from cities across the US (choose 'Local' in the MSNBC navigaton bar to reach http://www.msnbc.com/setnbc.asp). Within the Newsweek part of the website, articles end with a list of related articles and articles covering the same domain of interest. Counterbalancing Time's online news-related crossword puzzle is Newsweek's online news quiz.

A news quiz equally belongs to the distractions on offer at www.usnews.com, the US News website. Apart from the 'News and Views' of the latest issue, US News offers a quick guide to colleges and graduate schools (the .edu-section at http://www.usnews.com/usnews/edu/home.htm) and a special section featuring 'News you can use' (http://www.usnews.com/usnews/nycu/nycuhome.htm) – that is, practically oriented news on money, health, tech, travel and work. Potientially interesting for teachers is the Classroom Program (http://www.usnews.com/classroom/), although the set-up is clearly commercial. You can browse through a number of general suggestions on how to use (US) news articles in a classroom and you can have a look at one free 'resource unit'. Other educational services are not for free.

The distinguished Harper's Magazine has a distinguished looking little website (www.harpers.org), but very little actually on offer: not much more than indexes can be had from it – the latest issue's table of contents, or a search on previous indices. The only bonus is an index of statistics submitted by users (but not verified) at http://www.harpers.org/harpers-index/online.html.

If you want to learn more about sports, you may want to try something else than the sports section of a magazine or newspaper: SportsJones (www.sportsjones.com) is a webzine without printed counterpart that has been online for a couple of years and aims at viewing sports 'in a different light' – not seen, that is, as every tycoon owned media conglomerate would see it.

1.3.3 US News Agencies

The website of Associated Press (www.ap.org) itself is not particularly interesting, offering some facts and figures about the company, contact information, and the like. The subsection you will want to explore further if eager for news is called "The Wire" (wire.ap.org). You can choose from such sections as U.S., world, business, sports, arts, etcetera. For some of the special features listed on the left hand side of the opening page, you will need a recent version of QuickTime or RealPlayer to watch the video footage. Among the special sections, there is one offering religious news ('Faith') and one looking back to see what happened on the current date in the past ('Today in history'). The project archive holds a number of detailed files on selected topics, including one, for instance, on the English language ('The Mother Tongue'). A final favourite of ours is the separate page of 'News to us': news selections which did not make the official AP selection, but are thought newsworthy by some of AP staff – how about 'Teacher Suspended for Spit Incident' or 'Chicken Lived 18 Months Without Head'?

The Reuters website (www.reuters.com) is especially high on financial news. It is easy and fast to browse but does not offer any of the extras you can find on AP's website. Video coverage from Reuters can, however, be viewed from Yahoo's news site (http://dailynews.yahoo.com/headlines/top_stories/), which is also amply stocked with pictures and audio files. Both the Yahoo site and its less 'multimediatized' Netscape counterpart (http://dailynews.netscape.com/dailynews/main.tmpl) offer 'local' sections, though the number of local areas covered is decidedly smaller than that of the MSNBC network referred to earlier.

1.3.4 US Broadcasting

If you want video to enhance your news experience, broadcasting corporations are a good place to visit.Whether it is ABC (http://abcnews.go.com), CBS (http://cbsnews.cbs.com) or CNN (www.cnn.com), they all offer a wealth of video (and audio) coverage, with ABC and CNN including a separate audio and video index. Typically, a choice is offered between RealPlayer or Windows Media Player, sometimes extending onto QuickTime. Via a system of local affiliates, all these websites provide links to local news stations as well. The ABC and CBS news sites are both solid, easy-to-use websites, but neither goes a long way to building in added features nor to setting up an interactive community. The CBS site does include the simple but practical feature of e-mailing the news story you're reading, and the section 'The Odd Truth' may turn out to be a welcome resource for the not so very serious news. CNN's website – noblesse oblige – has more to offer in the way of features and interactivity. A very nice section is the so-called Daily Almanac (http://www.cnn.com/almanac/daily) which includes a quote, a listing of the day's events and of some of the upcoming events in the near future, a news link, some celebrities' birthdays and a listing of some historical events that took place on the same calendar day. CNN online stimulates discussion via its amply used message board, and via scheduled live chats and transcripts of past chats. On top of all this, the CNN website has a more solid and modern look than the television channel, and none of the self-congratulatory announcements. Unless, of course, if you turn on the video…

For news on Canada, you can consult one of the three affiliates to be reached via CNN's Local website (http://www.cnn.com/LOCAL/) or have a look at the website of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's news section (http://cbc.ca/news/).

Consulting news via the NBC website will lead you to the MSNBC-news menu referred to earlier in connection with Newsweek. What was not mentioned so far is the vast, good looking and well-documented website of the Public Broadcasting Service (www.pbs.org) which groups the hundreds of national noncommercial television stations. If you're only looking for news, you will stopy by at the Online Newshour website (http://www.pbs.org/newshour/) which includes a video section, and a 'special' for students. If you have time to spend, however, take the trouble of browsing the PBS site a bit further. It has established a firm tradition of setting up handsome and interesting websites covering topics dealt with in its programmes and documentaries.

If you prefer trouble-free audio to slow and shaky video, you should try Voice of America (www.voa.gov) for international online broadcasts in many different languages – not, however, including Dutch. Apart from these broadcasts and a few features to be mentioned under the ensuing category (Historical USA), the site itself does not have much to offer and is, in fact, rather a sad example of what a website can look like.

2 Historical USA

A solid understanding of our history is a necessary preliminary to interpreting the world around us today.. As we hover around the turn of both a century and a millennium, it should come as no surprise that the internet is well furnished with websites dealing with the recent or distant past. Websites dealing specifically with the history of the USA are listed in our History section, but some of the news sources mentioned so far have old news to offer as well as recent news. Apart from searching the online archives of newspapers and magazines for older articles, you can take a look at some special 'century' or 'millennium' sections:

• Voice of America has two specials on offer: its Millennium Moments (www.voa.gov/moments/) and The Century in Sound: An American's Perspective (http://www.voa.gov/century/century.html). You will need RealPlayer for both. The former features dozens of short broadcasts (with transcripts) on people, events and ideas 'that shaped our world during the past thousand years'. The latter is a 38 minute recording of sounds that typify the 20th century – sound recordings in themselves being already typical of this era. The accompanying file allows you to follow the succession of music, noises, poems and speeches that are stacked onto each other in chronological order. You can hear Theodore and Franklin D. Roosevelt, Stravinsky's Rite of Spring, cummmings' reading of a poem, Ellington, Mao Tse Tung, Charlie Parker, a wailing Vietnamese woman, the theme from Star Wars, the sound of a fax machine and much, much more. Highly recommended – if you have the patience to sit and listen for over half an hour...
• The New York Times: Visions and Reflections justly assumes that the turn of the millennium is not only a time to reflect on the changes for better or for worse that came about during the past one hundred years or so in countries around the globe ('Reflections'), but also to look forward and ponder what new developments may be expected in a wide range of areas ('Visions'). For a host of thought-provoking essays, give www.nytimes.com/specials/010100mil-index.html?0107 a try!
• The interactive news museum Newseum hosts the results of a 'Stories of the Century' survey held among journalists and users in the shape of two top-one hundreds and an illustrated timeline (www.newseum.org/century/index.htm#). For the video section accompanying this site, you will need a recent version of QuickTime.
• For an extensive 'history of 1000 years in 500 days' (at a rate of two years per 'day'), you can consult a special section at the Guardian Unlimited Network (www.guardianunlimited.co.uk/Millennium/1,2833,-1000,00.html). The point of view is clearly British, focusing for the first few days, for instance, on Norwegians and Danes controlling or invading parts of what is now Britain. On the other hand, there was not much USA around in those days to make history in, so to speak, and in the sections on more recent years, ample scope is given to American history as well. Throughout, the lay-out and interface are simple and effective, and many names and places constitute highlighted links. Worth a go!
• Certainly a very interesting way of looking into recent US history is through reading and experiencing the 'Great American Speeches' of the last eighty years at one of the PBS subsites (http://www.pbs.org/greatspeeches/). The speech archive itself lists historical events and intersperses them with clickable speech transcripts, backgrounds, and audio and video excerpts. But that is not all: the Great American Speeches website contains various additional features that make it particularly interesting for classroom use, such as an American history quiz with two levels, information on famous speakers, an interactive interface aimed at teaching some technical terms from rhetorics, an exercise on speaking skills and a critical analysis of Nixon's (amply hyperlinked) Checkers Speech. The added Ideas for Teachers do suggest the use of the video set which is available from PBS, but you can get a long way using only the material available online. Excellent multimedia education!

3 Still more links?

If the above doesn't satisfy your needs, there are plenty of other places to look for more news. You might simply Ask Jeeves (www.askjeeves.com/index.asp ) and go to the News section. For more links to online news resources, you can try Newspapers – Directories and Links Collections. From that subsite, you can click some 50 sites that sometimes give alphabetical lists, sometimes divide links in categories or both. Some of our favourites are:

• The Ultimate Collection of News Links (http://pppp.net/links/news), where you can look up newspapers and other printed periodicals per country. The wide range covered, and the large number of links, should help you ignore the rather unattractive lay-out of the site.
• Pretty much the same goes for May we Direct You? (http://wedirectyou.com/newspapers/usa-a-d.htm), which offers links to nearly a thousand American newspapers, listed alphabetically. It also has some links in other categories such as Commerce, Culture and Entertainment, but here the number of links is rather restricted. The translation technology that should enable you to use the site in other languages than English, such as French or Portuguese, did not seem to be working when we checked this site?
• Both Local Free Press (www.localfreepress.com) and News from Your Home Town (www.hometownnews.com) provide links to a host of smaller, regional newspapers, such as the Marshall Independent (http://www.oweb.com/independent), to name just one of many. Of these two local news resources, it seems to be Home Town News that offers the largest number of links to local newspapers…
• Newspapers with English Language Websites (www.zafo.com/news) gives just what it says it gives: links to daily newspapers with English websites – whether those newspapers be from English speaking countries, or not. All the indexed sites are rated and commented on, with an indication of the date on which they were 'tested'. Thorough work!
• The World's Newspapers on the Web (www.onlinenewspapers.com) gives quick and easy access to lists of links to the publications of the country or state you select from pull-down windows. Users can add links, which is probably cause for some less relevant publications to make their appearance – for Belgium, for instance, the Koopjeskrant or the Gazet van Aalter & Zomergem…

The extensive About Network (http://home.about.com) would not be complete without an About website on the US: the Current Events: US website at http://usnews.about.com/newsissues/usnews/mbody.htm, featuring news stories, discussions and polls. You may also want to take a look at the US and World Newspaper sites at http://usnewspapers.about.com/newsissues/usnewspapers/mbody.htm and http://worldnewspapers.about.com/newsissues/worldnewspapers/mbody.htm. The US papers are organized in categories according to interest groups (e.g. 'Green', 'Financial', 'Jewish'), the world section lists papers according to geographical area.

A similar and good newspaper index can be accessed via http://ajr.newslink.org (choosing the 'Newspaper' section leading on to http://ajr.newslink.org/news.html), offering both US and non-US newspapers. The Articles section of the AJR Newslink website features some articles on journalism and newsgathering from the American Journalism Review.

For a wealth of official Washington decisions and announcements, you can consult the US Department of State's International Information Programs website at http://usinfo.state.gov. On top of such rather cut-and-dry information, you want to try the section called simply 'United States of America', especially the subsections 'Society, Values and Politics' (http://usinfo.state.gov/usa/socval.htm) and 'Information USA' (http://usinfo.state.gov/usa/infousa). In additions to external links, you will encounter IPP electronic journals and other publications, certainly not of the ultra-short, superficial kind which you so often run into on the internet – try the excellent State Department Outline Series, for instance (http://usinfo.state.gov/products/pubs/outline.htm).

Apart from a natural or boolean language search for online articles from books, magazines, or newspapers (or even for pictures), Elibrary (www.elibrary.com) additionally offers its so-called 'tracker' service, allowing you to enter up to five topics about which you want to receive regular e-mail updates with the latest headlines on those topics.

Finally, as the very last, but certainly not the least of suggestions, the so-called 'webfeed company' Moreover maintains a website that is definitely worth a stop (www.moreover.com). Their decidedly modern and good-looking website does not contain news stories, but headlines linked to news stories all over the web. In order to search for news, you can access a total of 304 news categories via ten pull-down menus which contain subcategories underneath such general headings as Consumer news, General news, Sports & Culture news, and – 'of course' – US news. The system is perfectly simple, but very effective.