Portals to Third World News
Inter Press Services
www.ipsnews.net
Journalists seeking to create an alternative to the mainstream and corporate wire services and news agencies founded the Inter Press Services (IPS) news agency in 1964. IPS calls itself “civil society’s leading news agency…an independent voice from the South and for development, delving into globalisation for the stories underneath.” Originally created to provide information on Latin America to Europe in the years following the Cuban revolution, IPS has become a major player in the international information industry. The IPS website provides local stories, reprints from local newspapers and excellent news analysis in 19 languages. A great place to begin the search for news from abroad.
AllAfrica
www.allafrica.com
The largest provider of news and information for the continent of Africa, Allafrica.com is the successor to the Africa News Service. With offices in Johannesburg, Lagos, Dakar, Port Louis, Mauritius and Washington D.C., AllAfrica has a unique breadth to its content in both English and French. The site not only offers breaking news from over 100 of Africa’s newspapers and magazines but also houses the archives of the African News Service dating from 1997. Latest developments and in-depth coverage of economic development and poverty, war and peace, international relations, religion, culture and politics are all readily available from the site. AllAfrica.com is also related to the AllAfrica Foundation that is involved with a number of philanthropic and advocacy projects and gives the Charlayne Hunter-Gault Fellowship for African women journalists. The site has also been nominated for the coveted Webby Award for “Best News Site” two years in a row.
Asian Times On-Line
www.atimes.com
Asian Times On-Line (ATOL) is a major portal for news throughout the Asian continent. The site is the successor to the daily Hong Kong newspaper Asian Times that collapsed due to the Asian financial crisis of the late-1990s. They maintain offices in Hong Kong and Bangkok. While Asian Times On-Line is largely oriented to U.S. business readership, it has many unique perspectives on Asian developments. As their website attests: “We look at these issues from an Asian perspective; this distinguishes us from the mainstream English-language media.” ATOL is also available in a Chinese-language edition (www.asiatimes-chinese.com). ATOL sports correspondents in 13 Asian countries, including the Indian subcontinent and Central Asia, and reprints articles from a number of local publications throughout the continent.