Contents of this page:

• BIG CITY NEWSPAPERS
• National Newspapers
• Metropolitan Dailies
• SOME KEY FOREIGN NEWSPAPERS
• BROADCAST SITES
• OTHER JOURNALISM SITES
• BIG MAGAZINES
• PIONEERING ONLINE NEWSPAPERS

Note on big newspapers:

(Don't quibble with my definition of "Big" please; I'm attempting to get a decent representation of the largest circulation newspapers that have an online presence -- and a few others -- on this list. If the newspaper being sought isn't in my listing below, it might be among my listing of small newspapers [The Record of Hackensack, N.J., for example I list as "small," while the Syracuse, N.Y., Post Standard I list with the majors. Blame it on my N.Y. bias.], or one might try one of the several newspaper search engines I've linked to in "Key sites.")
 

Christian Science Monitor: *****Truly outstanding site.

• The Monitor may be one of the best one-stop sites on the Web for daily news.
• Remember that CSM, like the Wall Street Journal and USAToday, does not publish on weekends. These organizations' online sites slow down on weekends as well.
• The Monitor posts many fine citizen-generated commentaries and provides many feature stories that other newspapers miss or ignore.
• The Monitor also maintains (loosely) a Weblog ("blog") of useful reference sites.
  

Los Angeles Times:

• The Times paved the way among large newspapers in not hiding its daily editorial content from browsers.
  
• Now a part of the Chicago Tribune empire, editors have changed at the Times, but the paper appears solid.
  

New York Times: ***One of the best news sites

• The Times has competently built its online presence into one of the best on the Web. One of its outstanding features is its Navigator, a no-nonsense guide to the Internet. It also provides a glossary of Internet terms.
• It's become apparent that even on the Web, the Times is the standard by which all others are measured; if they are serious about news, that is.
• A tiny but significant note:  The Times' log of sports games is often faster than ESPN's "Gamecast" in reporting results.
  

USAToday:

• As crowded and colorful as the print edition, but still a good quick read.
• Among major newspapers, USA Today has invested time and energy in its online version with some gusto (while many smaller Gannett papers have disdained the Web. A similar strategy kept USA Today afloat through its first decade.)
• USAToday has moved a big step above its "McPaper" reputation (though in my opinion not as much as some giddy newspaper critics give them credit for; their international coverage remains almost non-existent), and of course nobody does the weather like USAToday. There's a meteorological education waiting for those who visit the newspaper's weather site.

Wall Street Journal:

• Dow Jones is about to be sold (June, 2007), and the highest and only bidder ($5 billion) is J. Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation; this has frightened the majority stockholders at DJ into trying to create a binding contract that would tie Murdoch's hands in gaining control over the editiorial content of the WSJ.  Once again, the news is the news.
• Just about everything in the printed version of the Wall Street Journal is in the interactive version, but it costs. There's a charge for registration, but the online version provides news all week, unlike the 5-day print version, and it carries an expanded Sports section.  Keep in mind that the $99 annual charge for print and online delivery ($79 for online journal only) is about one-sixth the annual cost of the street version.
  
• One can hardly stay current on business news without browsing the journal, and its "middle column" on the front page remains one of the outstanding features of U.S. newspaper journalism.  Much of its stock market news, however, is gradually being beaten by online market services.
• Available free online is the WSJ's editorial page with a link that directs readers to the "Best of the Web Today" and as such is joining the growing number of newspaper blogs ("Weblogs").  The WSJ's "Opinion Journal" is at:  http://www.opinionjournal.com
  

 Washington Post: ***Excellent site

• Polls consistently rate the Post's online presence as one of the best on the WWW.
• The Post provides a wonderful two-week archive of both Post articles and the AP's news articles.
• The Post also provides some of the best interactive journalism in its "talk" links, which are highly regulated and monitored, and its Job Matrix may be one of the most convenient means of searching for employment in the D.C. area. (They do get several national ads listed geographically under "other".)

Arizona Republic:

• A good example of a newspaper attempting to provide on its Web site public information of a wide range in addition to news.
• Has one of the best organized and most useful "site maps."  Go to the bottom of the home page and click on the link.
  

Arkansas Democrat-Gazette:

• This site opens with an option of viewing the front page of the print edition in what is called the "enhanced" view.
  
• One can, using the enhanced view and Acrobat Reader, download the entire print edition in pdf.
• Take note that its "Standard" Web edition contains "many . . . (but not all)" of the stories published in the newspaper.
  

Atlanta Journal-Constitution:

• The AJC always has been one of the strong voices of the Southeast.  If one is in the Southeast and is not oriented toward Washington or Miami, the Journal may be your newspaper.
  
• Its Web version is a bit crowded and confusing, but still accessible.
  

Baltimore Sun:

• A much improved site that still suffers from overcrowding and too heavy a dose of Baltimore boosterism.
• Despite the heavy-handed Web management, the Sun is home to some of the best writers in the business and one of the leaders still in investigative journalism.
  
• The Sun's classifieds section provides a good search engine for job seekers.

(Baton Rouge, La.) Advocate:

• This paper's home page gives a quick line-up of news and columns available online.
• Its involvement with the WBRZ broadcast outlet gives its Web page a strong attention to graphics and photos, but whether this helps its reporting of the news remains an open question.
  

Boston Globe:

• The Globe site now puts more emphasis on the newspaper, althought the Boston.com site is much broader.
  
• Circulation has dipped since the New York Times bought the paper, and the scandal that resulted in the firing of two of its most popular columnists didn't help things. The Globe has never disdained controversy, and that seems to continue.
• The Globe still has some of the best writers in the business, but it also has several who think a lot more highly of themselves than they ought to.
• The Globe has a deep archives attached to its site, but anyone who wants to download a story more than several days old will be charged, and the charge goes up at peak hours. Still a bargain for researchers, though.
• As have many newspapers, the Globe offers an e-mail offering that takes browsers right to their interests.
  

Boston Herald:

• Redesigned and redirected to take on the Globe, the Herald makes a good WWW appearance.  Unfortunately, style can't make up for substance.

Buffalo News:

• The largest newspaper in western New York State, and according to reviews a big money-making product for it owners.
• Unfortunately, its Web site displays a "bottom-line" mentality by serving more as a Chamber of Commerce booster than a news source.

Chicago Tribune:

• Readers can track columnists here. The Trib does a good job of promoting its many columnists. (For those with America Online access, the Tribune is a big news provider for AOL.)
• The judges at E&P placed the Tribune first in the category of best online editorial content in 1998. Since then, the Trib has not only greatly improved its Web presence, it has purchased the Los Angeles Times and its Times-Mirror holdings.
• Probably this paper deserves to be linked with the handful of "national" newspapers in the U.S., but like so much of Midwestern America, it suffers from a provincial image.
  
• Some time ago, the Columbia Journalism Review ran an enlightening and informative series of articles examining the nation's largest corporate newspapers, beginning with the Tribune. 

Chicago Sun-Times:

• Among other things, a daily dose of Roger Ebert on the movies is available here.
  
• From here one can also get a look at 76 suburban Chicago newspapers, formally called the Chicago Newspaper Network Online.
• Also in partnership with the Sun-Times is The Jerusalem Post and England's Daily Telegraph.
  

Cincinnati Enquirer:

• A Gannett paper in a blue-collar region.
• The Enquirer gained notoriety with its Chiquita Banana expose and its later front-page apology; among critical journalists I'm not certain it will ever recover and be taken seriously.

Cleveland Plain Dealer

• The Freedom Forum conducted a survey of journalism and religion in Cleveland in 1998 and held a forum in late August 1999 to confront the Plain Dealer with findings that the newspaper is not delivering on the religion news front. That same charge could be laid at the feet of 90 percent of the major metropolitan dailies.
• The Plain Dealer responded with a special religion section, but don't look for anything from it or much of anything else from the newspaper on this Chamber-of-Commerce brochure called "Cleveland Live."

Colorado Springs Gazette Telegraph:

• A lively, conservative newspaper in the heart of evangelical Christian country but with a surprisingly lowkey coverage of religion.
• Has experimented with adding copy editors' and headline writers' by-lines to stories alongside the reporter-writer's.  Not a bad idea, in my book, for giving some credit to the legion of "hidden journalists" with our nation's newspapers, but I think the Gazette recently abandoned the practice.
• Also the home of award-winning conservative cartoonist Chuck Asay. [See my column dealing with an Asay cartoon.]

Columbus (Ohio) Dispatch:

• Columbus and Ohio State University provide a hub for the Internet. The newspaper on the spot offers a pretty good web site.
• Not surprisingly, it's a little heavy on college football, if that's your taste.

Dallas Morning News:

• A major Southwestern newspaper, DMN has greatly improved its site as a Web version of the newspaper.
• A specialty of this site is its bolstered religion coverage, but the site contains much more of value than that.
• With George W. Bush in the president's office, DMN should see an even more influential future (same goes for Houston and Fort Worth).

Denver Post:

• A News Media Group newspaper; in fact, the group's largest, the Post made an assault on the Rocky Mountain News and almost drove the RMN to disaster. A lively competition is ongoing in the Rockies.
• Dean Singleton, CEO of NewsMedia Group, likes to stress that his firm remains privately owned and is not driven by the Wall Street mentality of many publicly owned newspaper conglomerates. Don't look for a premium pay-scale here, though.
• Singleton likes to say he wouldn't own a newspaper in a place he wouldn't live. Great sentiment, but I somehow can't see Singleton settling in Fairbanks, Alaska. I know he likes to ski, but . . .
• It appears these two competing newspapers (Post and Rocky Mountain News) will end up in some form of agreement.

Detroit Free Press:

• In addition to a good commitment to the news, the Freep, as it's lovingly called, also devotes lots of attention to training better journalists. Of course, they have to; almost everyone working there crossed a picket line.
• Using this site's Knight-Ridder connections, a journalist can get a good education here. This is also the site to navigate to jobs in the Knight-Ridder chain. Their list is updated about every three weeks.

Detroit News:

• The biggest and, according to the American Journalism Review's poll, the best of the afternoon dailies with a presence on the Web. The News is one of the few online newspapers to post parts of its comic section.
• Modern question: If one joins a newspaper's online edition while that newspaper is on strike, does that make one a digital scab?

Fort Lauderdale (Fla.) Sun-Sentinel:

• Readers might be surprised to learn this newspaper is the 39th largest in the U.S (36th according to 1997 Sunday figures).
• Its site is a clean, easily navigated site that highlights local as well as national news.

Gannett Corp.:

• One can link into several Gannett newspapers by going to this "newswatch" page at the corporate site. Several, such as Florida Today (the newspaper of Florida's "Space Coast" with almost more space news than NASA, and the newspaper that provided a prototype for the Gannett flagship, USAToday) or the Nashville Tennessean, have their own URLs.
• Gannett now owns the Army Times and its accompanying service newspapers.

Hartford (Conn.) Courant

• Some might debate Hartford as a big city, but it serves a large population area in New England. The newspaper is credited with being the oldest continuous daily newspaper in the United States.
• Many think it was a better paper before it was purchased by the LATimes syndicate. It remains an excellent paper, I think. It goes with the LATimes into the Chicago Tribune family since the purchase of Times Mirror by the Trib.

Houston Chronicle:

• Because of its special online presence, I've included this one in Pioneering Online Newspapers, below.

• Along with the Arizona Republic, this is the flagship of the Pulliam organization, which was instrumental in the origins of the Society of Professional Journalists and also in fighting the demagoguery of Sen. Joseph McCarthy.
• Tends to be conservative on most issues.

Kansas City Star:

• One of the stars in the Knight-Ridder chain.
• Knight-Ridder, more than any newspaper corporation, has invested heavily in the future of the Internet for the delivery of news, and the KC Star is its driving model for this investment.

Las Vegas Review-Journal:

• Some may argue with a "major" classification for this newspaper, but Las Vegas is one of the fastest growing areas in the nation, and all journalists should recognize by now that newspapers tend to succeed where the population is growing.
• The paper, part of the Donrey Media Group, offers a thorough Web content in its presentation.

Miami Herald:

• The Herald brings us Dave Barry. For what more could we ask?
• The Herald also has a Spanish version online, El Nuevo Herald.

Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel

• A little too much emphasis on pro football at this site for my taste, but one of the outstanding newspapers of the cold north.

Minneapolis Star-Tribune:

• The Star-Tribune is the 17th largest daily in the nation, quietly influencing the upper Midwest.
• It's the largest newspaper in the McClatchy chain and is among the best papers in the country. In 1999 its news Web site was selected among the top three newspaper sites by E&P.
• It also is perhaps the leading newspaper that has taken a "team" approach to the gathering and editing of the daily news.
• In a specialized news note, the Trib is one of the few large, metropolitan dailies with a "liberal" tilt that doesn't treat religion news disdainfully.

New Jersey Online:

• The National Association of Newspapers in 1997 thought this the best site on the web from newspapers circulating more than 100,000 copies daily.
• My thinking is otherwise. Most sites that attempt to highlight a region, as this does, tend to undersell the paper and utilize the WWW more as a promotional tool than a news site.  I think the accolades came at a time when judges were thinking more about how to make money from the WWW than whether or not a site was delivering news.
• There are lots of free-wheeling "Forums," but little from the perspective of the editors; in fact, if one isn't in a searching mood, one could easily bypass the Star-Ledger's home page at this site.
• I suspect the business and marketing departments are running the site not the editorial departments. In fairness, this appears true of several newspaper sites that promote the region. Even the Boston and Philadelphia sites, both excellent for the newspapers, sometimes are difficult to navigate.
• For those who might like it, this site is loaded with "Sinatra" items.

New Orleans Times-Picayune:

• Many would say this paper has the oddest and most distinctive name in American journalism.
• Its site is one of the better of that breed that ties into promoting the city as well as the newspaper. Is this what "community journalism" is about, however?

Newsday:

• Newsday gets high marks for its clean and easy layout that allows rapid navigation around the site.
• Newsday may have given up on its New York City edition, but it still "owns" Long Island.
• Like other major newspapers serious about the Web, Newsday provides free access to two weeks of its archives; after that a charge is made by item.
• Somewhat surprisingly, this paper and site keeps tabs on religion news better than most.

New York Daily News

• As does the print version, the Daily News attempts to make the day's photos a highlight of the news.
• Check out its archives for some great features on New York City.

New York Post:

• This one-time bastion of New York City liberalism has become something of a leader in bringing sensational celebrity journalism into the mainstream.
• Some stories here read like the free-wheeling days of early 20th century journalism, and their sports writers pull no punches.

Orange County Register:

• The largest newspaper (23rd by 1997 circ. figures) that represents a county rather than a metropolitan area in its name.
• A chief competitor for the LATimes, which operates an Orange County bureau and publishes a separate edition. Actually, in Orange County the Times is the "competitor."

Oregonian (Portland, Oregon):

• One of the outstanding dailies of the Pacific Northwest, but its site champions the region as much as the newspaper. With a little searching, one can pinpoint local news.
• Unfortunately, the Oregonian is tied to one of those regional Web developments that acts more as PR booster than news source.
• I suspect there's an online paranoia lurking among the publishers of newspapers on such sites; they still feel the Internet is an unprofitable means of "scooping" the print version and driving readers away, a notion with little evidence to support it.

Orlando Sentinel:

• Mickey Mouse may have turned this city into the largest convention city in the nation.
• This pretty good newspaper keeps track of the ongoing growth.

Philadelphia Online:

• One of the classiest of the big paper sites. Not Knight-Ridder's "flagship," but perhaps its best all-around paper. All the news one could ask for from both of Philadelphia's papers, the Philadelphia Inquirer and the Philadelphia Daily News, although one may have some trouble getting to the newspapers themselves.
• This site is the best in the category of advertising content, according to the judges of the E&P 1997 interactive newspaper competition. I'm not sure for journalists whether that's to be taken as a compliment or not, but I'm sure its the way to bolster a newspaper's online offerings.

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette:

• It's difficult to tell if the Gazette is the winner or the loser following Pittsburgh's protracted newspaper strike.
• The Post-Gazette is making some bold strides in newspaper design, treating its front page more as a "cover" without story text than as a showcase starting point for the day's best stories.
• Some think this strategy is influenced by or is influencing web presence.

Providence Journal

• This fine old newspaper, struggling at times in a state losing population, still has much to offer.
• One of the most intriguing offerings on the WWW is the Journal's "power of words" feature for writers.

Rocky Mountain News (Denver, Colo.):

• A feisty competitor in Denver with a particularly renowned sports section. Locked in a daily circulation war with the Denver Post.
• To be more competitive, the RMN greatly diminished its statewide coverage, a strategy whose wisdom remains to be seen.

Sacramento Bee:

• One of Northern California's leading newspapers, the Bee recently joined with a local TV station to provide content to their joint web site.
• Many newspapers have done likewise in their cities; it seems to be the front of a future wave. There is strong evidence that newspapers will survive only by forging such alliances. Is it good for journalism? Who knows?

Salt Lake Tribune:

• As the next Winter Olympics looms, this newspaper will get more notice.
• A fine paper in conservative country. The Tribune has one of the most comprehensive sites for a newspaper its size.

San Antonio Express-News

• When one looks at Texas, one must look beyond the giants in Houston and Dallas.

San Diego Union Tribune:

• San Diego is to enlisted sailors what Annapolis is to U.S. Navy officers, and on that note, the enlisted folks get a bigger and better newspaper; but then, most at the academy probably read the Washington Post..

San Francisco Chronicle:

• Now owned by the Hearst Corporation, which merged the staff of the Examiner and the Chronicle when it purchased the paper in 2000, the Chronicle is fighting an uphill battle for respectability.  Hearst's reputation for putting profits first, however, could be hampering the effort.
• There has been some ferocious in-fighting since the staffs of two historically competitive news rooms merged, but that seems to have waned, according to industry news reports.
• The Web site, which is slightly hidden behind the sfgate site that attempts to bring the browser a virtual view of San Francisco, is clean and full.
• The Chronicle may be a microcosm of what's happening to print journalism as electronic news establishes a firmer presence.  The Internet revolution, in which Hearst is deeply entrenched with such properties as Netscape, hire.com, drugstore.com and geneaology.com, raises an interesting question for print newspapers:  Is an online presence pushing newspapers into Chamber-of-Commerce activities disguised as civic journalism?  (A peek at the once mighty S.F. Examiner's Web site may suggest the inevitable result.)

San Francisco Examiner:

• By reconfiguring under new owners as a tabloid and calling itself "San Francisco's Hometown Newspaper," the Examiner may no longer fit the category of a "major" metropolitan daily.
• Its Web site looks good, and I'm impressed with the way the Examiner handles its columnists, giving them top play in a frame often used by other newspapers to hide opinions.  Unfortunately, some would say the promotion of columns hides a slender news staff and a bottom-line mentality.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer

• All this time I thought the P-I was conceding Web journalism to the Times.
• It turns out the two papers' 1983 JOA restricted the P-I from maintaining a presence on the Web.
• This changed with a renegotiated JOA that gives the P-I a green light on the WWW. It's scrambling now to catch up.

Seattle Times:

• If one has to pick a newspaper in Seattle, this is the one. One of the few remaining family-owned dailies in the nation, it does a superb job of covering the growing Pacific Northwest. The paper moved to an a.m. publication in mid-1999.
• Most recently, the family -- originally from Maine -- purchased the Portland, Maine, paper, giving them a coast-to-coast presence.
• The Times has a fine feature that allows browsers to make e-mail contact with reporters and editors in its news room. Not all newspapers seem willing to do this.

St. Louis Post-Dispatch:

• The newspaper of Pulitzer. A liberal, crusading daily in the heart of the conservative Midwest. Still one of the top newspapers in the nation.
• Scout around at this site, it leads down some interesting side roads that aren't obvious because it's touting St. Louis as much as the newspaper.

St. Paul Pioneer Press:

• The Knight-Ridder offering in the twin cities region.
• Sometimes judged to have a slightly better online presence than the Star-Tribune of Minneapolis, but if that's so, it's simply because Knight-Ridder caught the Internet vision early and has poured more resources into the Web.

St. Petersburg Times:

• Nothing spectacular at the site of this newspaper that bills itself as "Florida's Best Newspaper."
• Because the St. Petersburg area has a probably spurious reputation for attracting elderly residents, the paper has a popular, if undeserving, image of being "geriatric."

Syracuse Post Standard:

• Many don't think of Syracuse as a major city, but one of the biggest schools of journalism resides there, and when one thinks of Western New York, Syracuse is big.

Tampa Bay Tribune:

Editor and Publisher:

• For anyone who wants to know about online newspapers, E&P maintains a list that is growing faster than I can type, now claiming about close to 3,000 listings of online newspapers.
• E&P sponsors an annual contest for online newspapers.
• For all its reputation as a service provider to journalists, one shouldn't overlook the fine reporting in some of E&P's news sections.

Presslink Inc.:

• Presslink provides text, photos and graphics, including the famous Bettman Archive that was recently purchased by William Gates. The Bettman Archive, incidentally, contains the entire UPI photo file from the days before the old UPI got out of the photo business.
• Searchers need to register and may be charged for downloads, though there are some freebies. Presslink is part of Knight Ridder's MediaStream. Incidentally, the pricetag for using Presslink is pretty hefty.

InfiNet (Knight-Ridder):

• Knight-Ridder is one of the first newspaper chains to recognize the potential of the Internet. The company was joined by Gannett and Landmark Communications in this effort.
• InfiNet in 1999 determined to sell off several of their "content" Web areas, including their copyrighted "Cool Site of the Day" feature.

The New York Times Syndicate:

• Not really a news site. More of a an online brochure. Here is where one finds information about columns by such luminaries as Bill Gates and Joe Bob Briggs, although Joe Bob announced that he's "burned out" and is no longer writing a column, eschewing print for the lure of the tube..
• This service touts itself as "The Syndicate for the New Millenium."

Syndicate World:

• This column has appeared regularly in the print pages of Editor & Publisher. Now it is online at E&P's site, written by David Astor.

APME (Associated Press Managing Editors):

• A comprehensive listing for resources in journalism can be found at this site.

Houston Chronicle Interactive:

• The Chronicle is a good example of how putting up an online paper is not just a transfer of print journalism savvy to the WWW, a lesson many others online haven't seemed to grasp fully yet.
• The Chronicle has been a pioneering newspaper in bolstering religion coverage, and its relgion page and columnists provide interesting online offerings.
• At one point, it was requiring registration, but that bad idea disappeared.

NandO net: The NandO Times:

• The American newspaper that has gone into online publishing in the biggest way is the Raleigh (N.C.) News and Observer. The paper is now part of the McClatchey chain and this is its electronic flagship. The chain has actually broken NandO net off from the newspaper as a separate operation.
• It covers everything, does it well and with few online bells and whistles, and has been more than once voted the best of the online newspapers by a wide margin, although others are cutting into that margin daily.

San Jose Mercury News:

• With the terror of the bombing at Centennial Park at the Olympic site in Atlanta, the SJM showed its improved online coverage, though it later got into some trouble with a biased CIA graphic that became a case study in how journalism on the WWW can lose its objectivity. Class seems to have been restored at the online site.
• The Mercury-News at first adopted a "broadcast" model of updating its news "on the hour" on the WWW, but it has since gone to updating the news on the WWW as it happens and is reported.

The Mercury-News  made history in January, 2000, when it introduced Viet, a Vietnamese language newspaper with its own specialized staff (don't go there expecting English!).

Arizona Daily Star (StarNet):

• Selected by the National Association of Newspapers as the best site on the Web for fostering community online.
• One of the few places that gives browsers access to selected comic strips!

Send comments, corrections or questions to arandrews@toadmail.com

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