The Online World Part 18

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 (the videotext page number is given in the upper right corner of each menu display). I selected "World" for global news, which gave me this list:

AP Online

6 Two Killed In Nagorno Karabakh 7 Yugoslavia Fighting Rages On 8 Storm Kills Five In j.a.pan 9 Afghan Rebels Going To Moscow?

0 19 Killed in Guatemala Quakes

MORE !8

Oh, a storm in j.a.pan! Interesting. I was due to leave for j.a.pan in a couple of weeks, and entered 8 at the MORE ! prompt to read. A screenful of text was transferred in a few seconds.

"This is for later study," I said, 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 from the user manual. Entering "5,6,9"

gave three stories in one batch with no pauses between them. Five screens with text. If I had read the menu more carefully, I might probably also have selected story 0. It looked like an interesting item.

"This is enough of the a.s.sociated Press," I thought, and typed G NEWS. This gave me 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 a.s.sociated 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. The service 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 transmitted daily to The Business Wire's subscribers."

Then #7: "This database contains selected full-text stories from 48 newspapers from across the United States. Cla.s.sified ads are NOT included in the full-text of each paper."

The list of newspapers included Boston Globe, Chicago Tribune and San Francisco Chronicle (known for many interesting inside stories from Silicon Valley).

Choice 8 gave news from England. There, I selected UK News Clips, which gave the following options:

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 are the release times of the stories.

They flow in from the wires in a continuous stream.

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 (with selected stories from The Daily & Sunday Telegraph, Financial Times, The Guardian, The Times/Sunday Times, Today, The Independent, Lloyd's List and The Observer).

Searching the UK Newspaper Library costs US$6.00 for up to ten hits. You get a selection menu of the first ten stories found. A menu with an additional ten stories costs another $6.00, etc. You pay US$6.00 to read the full text of selected stories. These rates are added to CompuServe's normal access rates.

The news service Soviet Crisis was my final destination. This was just a few weeks after the attempted coup in Moscow, and I was eager for reports.

I found the following interesting story from OTC NewsAlert:

OTC 09/19 0750 FIRST ENGLISH LANGUAGE SOVDATA DAILINE IS LAUNCHED

This selection gave me 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 Mead Data Central (Nexis/Lexis), and that it would be made available through like Data-Star, FT Profile, Reuters, Westlaw, and GBI.

Undoubtedly, the name has changed by the time you read this.

Finally, a fresh story about the fate of 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!

An overwhelming choice ---------------------- I am confident that your "daily online newspaper" will contain other stories. If you're into computers, you may want to start with Online Today, CompuServe's daily newspaper. It brings short, informative news stories about the computer industry.

NewsBytes is another interesting source for computer news. It offers global headline news from its bureaus around the world. The articles are sorted in sections called APPLE, BUSINESS, GENERAL, GOVERNMENT, IBM, REVIEW, TELECOM, TRENDS and UNIX. A favorite!

Newsnet is also available through Genie, ZiffNet on CompuServe, NewsNet, Dialog, in the newsgroup clari.nb on Usenet, and various BBS systems around the world. I read it through a Norwegian BBS (EuroNet in Haugesund).

For general news, start with major newswires, like a.s.sociated Press, Agence France-Presse, Xinhua, Reuters, and the like. You will find them on many commercial services including NewsNet, CompuServe, and Dialog.

FROGNET - The French Way ------------------------ If you know French, check out FROGNET. This French language service brings daily news from Agence France Press, and often has added excerpts from the French dailies.

FROG is distributed by the services of the French emba.s.sy in Washington. It covers world affairs, European and French items, a.s.sembled, naturally, from a French point of view.

The service is free. To subscribe, send a message through the Internet to [email protected] . It should contain your answers to the following electronic application form. Replace the %s with your inputs (This is French, right?):

NOM: % PRENOM: % NAISSANCE:../../..% ARRIVEE:../../..% DEPART:../../..% EMAIL: % ECOLE D'ORIGINE: % QUALITE: % ADRESSE DE RECHERCHE: % PAYS: % STATE: % UNIVERSITE: % RECHERCHE: % MOTSCLES: % DOMAINE: %

Complicated? OK, here's some instructions in "French ASCII":

* Pour les dates veuillez utiliser le format Francais (DD/MM/YY). Arrivee: c'est la date d'arrivee dans le pays ou vous etes actuellement.

* QUALITE: Etes vous VSN, PHD, MASTER, INGENIEUR, POST-DOC ...?

* ECOLE D'ORIGINE: Diplome obtenu en France * PAYS: US, Australie ....

* STATE: pour les US en 2 lettres (NY, TX, CA) * UNIVERSITE: actuelle ou societe * RECHERCHE: Soyez explicite !

* MOTSCLES: (ex: Neuronaux, polymeres, TVHD...) * DOMAINE: En 3 lettres confere nomenclature ci-dessous

Nomenclature de la National Science Foundation.

AGR AGRICULTURE BIO BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES HES HEALTH SCIENCES ENG ENGINEERING CIS COMPUTER AND INFORMATION SC.

MAT MATHEMATICS PHY PHYSICAL SCIENCES AST Astronomy ATM Atmospheric & Meteorological Sciences CHE Chemistry GEO Geological Sciences PHS Physics OPH Other Physical Sciences PSY PSYCHOLOGY SOS SOCIAL SCIENCES HUM HUMANITIES HIS History LET Letters FLL Foreign Languages & Literature OHU Other Humanities EDU EDUCATION EDG Education General TED Teacher Education TEF Teaching fields PRF PROFESSIONAL FIELDS BUS Business & Management COM Communications PFO Other Professional Fields OTH OTHER FIELDS

News is more than news ---------------------- After some time, your definition of the notion "news" may change.

Since so many conferences are interesting sources, they should also be a part of your news gathering strategy. Check in regularly to read what members report about what they have seen, done, heard, or discovered.

By the way, professional news hunters have also discovered this. Online conferences are popular hunting grounds for reporters of the traditional press.

FidoNet has many conferences with specialized news contents: