Olive Me

Thanks to the Internet I suppose I could read El País every day.  But I get bored after a while looking at the never-ending stream of news (and ads) that the Internet delivers.  What I want is to browse the actual paper, noticing what makes headlines when editors are constrained by the real front page.  I like to sip my café con leche and look around at everyone else’s paper, too, comparing, say, the Pais’s political spin to the Vanguardia’s white-shoe one to Avui’s Catalan perspective.  The Newseum’s Today’s Front Pages gallery delivers some of that browsing fun on its online gallery every day.

The museum posts front pages of over 700 newspapers every day.  Efficient readers might want to see the options in list form, I prefer poking around on the map.  Double click on the front page you want to browse and you get a larger view.  From there you can choose a downloadable PDF (of the front page only) or a link to the newspaper’s website.

The site carries a warning:  “Some front pages may contain material that is objectionable to some visitors. Viewer discretion is advised.”  They say nothing about the dangers of addiction to front page browsing.

The Newseum, a museum of the news and its relationship to democracy:  555 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W., Washington DC and on the web at: www.newseum.org