Finding News Headlines on the Web
How do you find todays news headlines from around the world? Search engines will not help you because they cannot find web pages created the same day, much less in recent hours.
But lets say you dont care which newspaper or broadcast outlet carries the news; you want the latest headlines from Russia or Africa or on a health issue such as Alzheimers regardless of where it is published on the web.
There are now several excellent news search tools. None of them is all encompassing, but used together they can help you find stories quickly.
THE BEST
Moreover: The best tool is Moreover (www.moreover.com), a UK-based site that features over 1,500 reliable English-language news sources (everything from the New York Times to Forbes and the BBC.) Consider Moreover your morning cup of coffee on the web a wake up call to what is making news around the world.
The main page gives you top international headlines. But Moreovers strength lies in its drop-down menus on the left side, where you can pick and choose the specialty area you want. The regional menu allows you to search by country; other sections let you focus on industries or cultural issues.
Moreover also has a search function on the right-hand side of its page. You can search for news by keyword and then refine your query. For example, you can put in Sierra Leone to find news on that war-torn country. Once you get your results, you will see several news sources. You can select one of them, for instance, BBC, and then click Refine and Moreover will retrieve Sierra Leone stories only from BBC.
WorldNews: Another excellent tool is WorldNews.com (www.worldnews.com). Like Moreover, it features headlines from international English-language news sources. You can also select news by country and -- amazingly -- in some cases, even by city. Unlike Moreover, WorldNews presents each search in the form of a newspaper, with photos, headlines and stories all on individual web sites. For example, there is a www.kosovodaily.com, a www.europedaily.com and a www.africadaily.com. In addition, on the left side margin, WorldNews provides you with links to outside reference and resource web sites, as well as international organizations.
In addition to searching for news by geographic location, WorldNews also gives you a convenient way to search for news by topic. Scroll down to the bottom of the main page and you will find a wealth of story beats. For instance, under Environment, you can find separate web pages for Nuclear Waste news, Global Warming and Pollution.
Personal Reader: A new American site put together by professional journalists offers a variation on these news searches. PersonalReader (www.personalreader.com) does not promise you all the news, but a selection of some of the best articles chosen by a team of specialists. Youll find insightful articles here that other search engines will miss. And unlike the other search tools, this site gives you a brief synopsis so you can choose before you click.
OTHER TOOLS
There are several other good tools for doing a news search by country.
For US news, 1st Headlines (www.1stheadlines.com) excels in American domestic news and some top world news. It also is very good for Technology and Health/Consumer news in the United States.
The best UK news search web site is NewsNow (www.newsnow.co.uk). It promises news up to the last few minutes. You can also select the kind of news you want Current Affairs, Business, etc. And the search box on the left can be very helpful to locate the story you want.
Canada does not really have any equivalent resources, unfortunately. The Southam chain (at www.canada.com) offers a limited search feature, plus a rundown of news headlines from its papers across the country. The Canoe site (www.canoe.ca/CNEWS/home.html) offers news from the Sun chain and easy access to the Canadian Press wires.
French-language news can be found at Net2One (www.net2one.fr), though its search function is limited and the news is mainly from France.
And for Spanish news headlines, try Titulares at www.titulares.com
WIRE SERVICES
Several of the leading wire services also provide search capabilities. (Youll find a list of them on Jnets Search the Wires page at www.journalismnet/.com/news/searchwires.htm)
AP gives you access to 250,000 news articles in its archives and you can pay for a more extensive search (see http://wire.ap.org/APsearch/main.html) The one complication is that you have to enter the AP search engine via one of its client newspapers.
Several of the main search engines also provide news searches, if you know where to click. Lycos News is at http://news.lycos.com/headlines/TopNews. Northern Light has many advanced features at www.northernlight.com/news.html.
Yahoo News (http://search.news.yahoo.com/search/news/options) finds the latest articles from AP, Reuters and other News Sources. Take a look as well at Yahoo Full Coverage (http://fullcoverage.yahoo.com/), which, like Moreover and WorldNews.com, features a wide selection of subject areas.
You will find all these search tools on JNets Search News page at www.journalismnet.com/news.
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