Browse the World’s Newsstands, See What’s Making Headlines

On the morning of Jan. 23, the residents of Johannesburg, South Africa, woke up to this headline in the newspaper the Star: “I’m No Sex Pest, Says Clinton.”

Normally, it would have taken weeks for us in the U.S. to see this headline. That’s how long it takes the Star, as well as other foreign papers not normally distributed in this country, to reach the major libraries that carry an extensive selection of offshore newspapers.

But now, hundreds of foreign dailies have sites on the World Wide Web. Many include not just a few stories, but a wide selection of the local and international pieces printed in them that day. A few newspapers even reproduce their front pages on the Web, allowing you to see the accompanying photographs and exactly where each story is positioned.

The problem is tracking down these many newspapers on the Web, especially if you don’t know the names of the prominent papers in your country of interest. And unless you’re willing to spend hours using a search engine, you’re likely to miss some smaller newspapers you’d enjoy seeing.

Luckily, there are now a few sites on the Web solely devoted to providing links to the newspapers in countries around the world.

One of the most complete and easiest to use is sponsored by the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. It’s at https://www.uncg.edu/lib/news.

The digital librarians who maintain the index have strict rules concerning which newspaper sites they’ll include. For a site to be listed in the index, it must be free, up to date and not require registration of any kind. The sites also have to carry full texts of stories, not just headlines or summaries, and they must cover a wide range of news topics (publications that solely cover business news, for example, are excluded).

The UNCG index is invaluable to anyone seeking news from a particular part of the world or studying a foreign language. It also provides a handy way to get an international perspective on a big news story.

When the story about an alleged affair between Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky broke, most foreign newspapers on the index handled it with far more restraint than the Star.

We sampled how several ran the story on Jan. 23. (Because of time zones, some of the newspapers checked that day were dated Jan. 24.)

In Australia, the lead story in the Sydney Morning Herald concerned the prime minister conceding, for the first time, that the country’s formal relationship with Britain’s royal family might be anachronistic. The Clinton story was ranked third in importance.

In Singapore, where Asia’s economic troubles are of huge concern, the leading story in the Straits Times about the United States was, “Clinton Launches Drive to Get More Funding for IMF.” It told of the president’s plan to urge Congress to devote more money to the International Monetary Fund’s bailout of Asian economies.

Next in importance was, “Clinton Denies New Sex Charges.”

The Times of London led with a story about Prime Minister Tony Blair’s battles with the Cabinet. The Clinton story--which included the oft-used phrase, “sex, lies and audiotape”--was second.

The less sedate Guardian played it much bigger, featuring no less than six stories on the alleged affair, with headlines such as, “A Dangerous Liaison Too Far” and “The Middle East Must Wait.”

Meanwhile in Hong Kong, the big story concerned the trial of three men who had allegedly hoarded enough explosives to destroy a skyscraper. Several more stories--including the upcoming return of chicken to Hong Kong after its ban due to the bird flu--took prominence over “Sex-Scandal Woman May Testify Against Clinton.”

Some newspapers hardly mentioned the story at all. The News International, of Karachi, Pakistan, did not list the alleged affair under its “Top Stories” on Jan. 23. Finally, on the 25th, it was mentioned within a story headlined, “Clinton Discusses Military Strike on Iraq.”

Even if you don’t read the language of a country, you can see how the story was played. The Aftonbladet newspaper in Sweden splashed the story over most of its tabloid-sized front page. In the Chosun newspaper in Korea, there was a picture of Kenneth Starr prominently displayed.

The story got less attention in El Universal of Venezuela, which gave wide coverage of the pope’s visit to Cuba.

If you are interested only in English-language publications, you might instead use the English-only foreign newspaper index provided at https://www.ecola.com/news/press. But these papers might not be as easy to access or as up to date. The strict regulations of the UNCG site do not apply here.

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Cyburbia’s e-mail address is david.colker@latimes.com.