Although most newspapers, magazines, journals and trade press have a presence on the Web not all of them provide free access to all of their articles. Some sites may have only a selection of today's articles, and others may charge for access to archives.
Key starting points
To locate the Web version of a newspaper or magazine, try one of the following:
ABYZ News Links www.abyznewslinks.com
Fast-loading site that lists over 15,600 newspapers and other news sources by country and by region within each country. There is a language code next to each newspaper and separate links to alternative language versions if they are available.
Online Newspapers www.onlinenewspapers.com
Another useful listing organized by continent and then country.
Journalism UK www.journalismuk.co.uk
Concentrates on UK newspapers, and has a particularly good list of UK regional newspapers and links to magazine publishers.
Trade publications
For trade or industry publications, try searching on the publication name or use one of the following directories:
Ulrich's Periodicals Directory www.ulrichsweb.com/ulrichsweb/
Ulrich's Periodicals Directory is the resource for tracking down periodicals of all types. It provides detailed and comprehensive information on serials published throughout the world, covers all subjects, and includes publications that are published regularly or irregularly and circulated free of charge or by paid subscription. This is a subscription service with rates starting at US $1,450 a year for a single user subscription.
Trade Publications www.tradepub.com
TradePub.com offers online subscription services for US controlled circulation publications.
Multi-source services
BBC News www.bbc.co.uk/news/ or news.bbc.co.uk
Not exactly a multi-source news service but it links to other relevant sites and stories and for many of us in the UK is a good starting point of news. It covers stories from around the world and you can watch BBC News 24 live. As well as text articles, there are videos of news items, podcasts and RSS feeds.
Google News news.google.com
News from local, regional, national and international sources. News is updated throughout the day and Google automatically puts links to the same story from different sources in the same search result. This makes it easier to scan the headlines without the clutter of repeat articles, but also gives you the option of reading the alternative versions provided by different sources.
News Now www.newsnow.co.uk
An unashamedly UK news service that gathers together stories from a wide range of UK sources. Headlines are listed under sections (Business and Finance, IT, Current Affairs, Sport, Gaming and Entertainment). Headlines are updated every 5 minutes and you can search the headlines of a 30 day archive.
Yahoo News uk.news.yahoo.com
Provides access to the last 30 days of news. The Advanced Search features include limit by publication, location and time period. There is a free email and RSS Alerts service.
Priced Services
BBC Monitoring Online www.monitor.bbc.co.uk
Global business, international politics and macroeconomic news from BBC Monitoring. This site covers thousands of business and political news reports from radio, newspaper, internet, television and news agency broadcasts from over 3,000 sources in more than 150 countries. These reports are monitored live, translated into English and then edited by BBC World Service journalists.
Factiva.com www.factiva.co m
Comprehensive news service now available on a pay-as-you-go basis as well as by annual subscription. There is an annual subscription of US$69 for the pay as you go option.
LexisNexis www.lexisnexis.com.
Lexis-Nexis is a subscription service with good industry and geographical coverage.
Circulation and distribution figures
Audit Bureau of Circulations (ABC) www.abc.org.uk
ABC audits the circulation of over 3400 magazines and newspapers. The information is freely available on the Web site and is of particular interest to advertising agencies and advertisers.
JICREG - British Newspaper Readership Data www.jicreg.co.uk
Joint Industry Committee for Regional Press Research. Offers data at the location level free of charge (log in as guest). Search by location, single newspaper, county, Independent Local Radio (ILR) area, ITV region, Incorporated Society of British Advertisers (ISBA) area, Registrar-General area, Local Government area. Information includes demographic profiles and detailed breakdown of readership. Data can be exported to Excel. Covers local and regional press only.
Newspaper Society www.newspapersoc.org.uk
The Newspaper Society represents and promotes the interests of over 1300 UK regional and local free and paid for titles. As well as general information on the industry, there are Facts and Figures on the industry for example advertising expenditure, circulation and distribution, ownership, regional mergers and acquisitions and top publishers.
UK
Financial Times www.ft.com
Essential UK business newspaper. You can view up to 10 articles a month free of charge as a registered user. The Standard Digital Subscription costs £5.19/week and Premium Digital is £6.79/week.
The Guardian www.guardian.co.uk
Access to current and archive Web content from the Guardian and The Observer ( http://observer.guardian.co.uk/ ) and there are some excellent blogs including the separate Datablog (http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog). In addition there are very useful oprions for searching world government data (currently covers UK, USA, Australia and New Zealand) at http://www.guardian.co.uk/world-government-data.
Independent Online www.independent.co.uk
Free access to current and archive articles.
Telegraph Newspaper Online www.telegraph.co.uk
Most of the hard copy Daily Telegraph and don't forget that it carries the Matt cartoons, and Alex - ideal for catching up with that city gent's escapades if you have been on holiday for a while. The Telegraph has now started charging for unlimited access (see http://www.telegraph.co.uk/subscriptions/ for details).
The Times (www.thetimes.co.uk) and the Sunday Times (www.thesundaytimes.co.uk)
Priced service. Subscriptions start at £2/week.