Identifying Foreign Newspapers on the Web
The three databases described here, Factiva, ACCESS World News, and Nexis Uni, do, indeed, provide you with newspaper articles from the foreign press, and are updated continuously. Most newspapers worldwide are available over the web. What is available backwards through time, though, varies dramatically from paper to paper. So, if a timeframe is part of your search, you need to use those databases. However, you can do keyword searches on a specific newspapers website and you will get photos and, often, even video. Naturally, most newspapers and their websites are in the major languages of the country. However, many countries have English language papers. The best lists I have found of what is available, country by country, are on these web sites:
- World Press ReviewUnique source of international news in that it includes translations and lists main news sources by country with a brief mention of their political leaning.
- Onlinenewspapers.comNot a very interesting name, and I haven't found out much about the source itself other than they appear to be Australian, but this is a very extensive listing by country and appears to be kept up-to-date!
- World NewspapersVery extensive listing of English-language newspapers around the world. "About Us" isn't terribly informative, but they do appear to be current and do, indeed, lead you to newspapers online!
Web Sites for Current International News
- Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL)This website is an invaluable source about what's happening in Central & Eastern Europe, Central Asia (e.g. Iraq and Iran) and the former Soviet Union. In addition to print reports, in English and local languages, you can listen to live broadcasts as well on some canned programs on demand. You can subscribe, for free, to an email news service for specific region/country.
- World News NetworkWorld News (WN) Network was founded in 1995 and launched online in 1998. It advertises itself as "...the most comprehensive, one-stop news resource on the Internet." With 70,000 new articles each day, in 50 languages, they HAVE been praised for the scope of their coverage! They are an especially good place to look for video coverage.
Databases of Newspaper Articles
None of these databases is particularly easy to use. Factiva is the most powerful and international of the three. There is a link to a 2 1/2 minute video on it below as well as more detailed instructions and a handout you can download.
- Factiva This link opens in a new windowFactiva has full text articles from newspapers and magazines from all over the world. While the main audience for Factiva is the business community, this is our most complete database for foreign newspapers. International coverage, including material in foreign languages, is far more extensive than Lexis-Nexis. Items are updated constantly in the case of news wires and daily in the case of most everything else. Retrospective coverage varies from title to title, but some go back to the 1980's. Change the DATES (very carefully!) unless you just want the most current 3 months. Below the big search box, you can select SOURCES from a specific region or select a REGION of interest. Connect words and phrases using AND, OR & ( ). The default is to look for those words anywhere in the article. Usually you will want to change that to the headline & lead paragraph only. Do that by clicking MORE OPTIONS.
- Access World News Research Collection This link opens in a new windowThis is a database of full-text articles from about 1900 news sources, including American and foreign newspapers, new wires and other miscellaneous sources. Everything is in English with some translated material from the BBC. Coverage varies radically from source to source and often selective. Dates of coverage vary with a few going back as far as the eighties or even the seventies. Most, however, have less than 10 years of coverage. The default is to search for the words you enter anywhere in the article. You might want to change ALL TEXT to LEAD/FIRST PARAGRAPH. Put " " around phrases. Use AND between search words/phrases. Use the pulldown menu to select WORD COUNT and GREATER THAN 500 WORDS to just get longer articles.
- Nexis Uni This link opens in a new windowNexis Uni includes a lot of things other than typical news sources. But, it is a great place to search news as it includes about 5,000 different news sources from around the world. When it opens you will want to work in the area labeled GUIDED SEARCH. Select News. Compose a search statement with these two labeled parts. The 1st part, labeled LEAD, is where you put words or phrases you think would appear in the lead paragraph, or beginning, of the story and enclosed in parentheses. Use * to truncate words. Put " " around phrases. Put the word and between different words/phrases. Keep it short, though. Then add the Boolean AND. It is a good idea to specify the LENGTH of the story. >1000 will only get you stories of real substance, but you can choose the length you want! You can then either select a date range from the pulldown or enter one of your design. Once you have run the search, options to narrow the results appear in a column to the left. LOCATION and PUBLICATION TYPE are two you might want to have a look at!
Searching Factiva for Country News
Watch this 2-minute video demonstrating a search of Factiva for recent news articles about a country on YouTube at:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3iWYr35T2oI&feature=youtube_gdata
FACTIVA: I have good news, and I have bad news
The Good News: We have a database that will allow you to find English language articles from major news sources in other countries. You can even limit to those articles that are LONG, bypassing the many short newswire type pieces. That database is Factiva, and you can access it from the library's list of databases.
The Bad News: Searching Factiva is nothing at all like searching Google. You must construct a logical Boolean search statement, use field labels, and set specific geographical and date limits in order for this to work!
The Other Good News: See a picture below of the Factiva search screen with the areas you need to set specified. You can see where you need to select the geographic region you want the news source from, select the geographic region you want the story to be focused on (not the same thing!) and the dates. The default is currently set to restrict sources to English.
The Other Bad News: You need to construct a logical Boolean search statement you will want to use once you set those limits in order to make sure you only get long stories (at least 1000 words) focused on an issue, idea, person. To do that, you need to imagine what the news story would look like. What words might appear in the headline (HD) or in the lead paragraph (LP) of the story you want to read. This is very difficult, and you need to think deep thoughts about that and try a lot of different searches. For, example, if I wanted long news stories focused on COVID, I might run a search like this:
HD=covid* AND WC>1000
That search is looking for articles over 1000 words long with covid in the headling. The * allows for other things to be attached to that single word, like covid-19. Don't underestimate the importance the *.
NOTE: You can download a PDF handout of these instructions and the search image below the image.
- Factiva This link opens in a new windowAccess to thousands of full-text business publications including newspapers, newswires, journals, magazines, and trade publications. Also includes company and financial information.