Slide 1
In today's interconnected global economy, it is more important than ever for businesses to be familiar with the different philosophies, world outlooks, and thinking processes of other peoples to be successful in the international arena. World News Connection (WNC) (File 985), a foreign news service compiled by Open Source Center (OSC) from the U.S. government and produced by National Technical Information Service (NTIS), is a vital database on Dialog to get this type of information.
Slide 2
A bit of history will help you understand how this database got its start. In 1947 the agency tasked with collecting open-source news information for the U.S. government was renamed the Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS). During the time between 1947 and 1995 the FBIS monitored all relevant foreign mass media, including radio, television, newspapers and magazines and the results were printed for dissemination to the U.S. Federal government. Since 1995 all news articles and analyses have been instead placed into a database that can be accessed online by U.S. government personnel. Following the attack on the World Trade Center and Pentagon in 2001, the 9/11 Commission in its report in July 2004 stated that Americans were generally unaware of the thinking of the rest of the world and recommended making this open-source intelligence collection analysis and dissemination entity available to the public. So in November 2005 FBIS was subsumed under the Open Source Center (OSC). Its mission was expanded from just covering radio, television and the press, to the Internet, including established news sources, private online reports, videos, and blogs. The portion of this database for which copyright clearance could be obtained is called the World News Connection (WNC) and is available to the public through a joint venture between NTIS and Dialog as File 985 on Dialog.
Slide 3
As mentioned, World News Connection (WNC) was created in 1995 to make the FBIS' news collection, as well as its analyses of the news, available to the public. WNC, updated hourly, is a powerful online subscription service bringing news from around the world, translated into English, to the WNC user desktop, usually within 24-72 hours from the time of the original publication or broadcast. The information is obtained from full text and summaries of newspaper articles, television and radio broadcasts, online sources, conference proceedings, periodicals, and non-classified technical reports. This unique foreign news resource covers sources and locations not covered at all by most commercial news agencies.
Slide 4
To abide by copyright laws, NTIS approached hundreds of news sources to seek copyright clearance for articles to be placed in World News Connection. NTIS filters out the articles for which it has no copyright clearance and updates WNC with the remaining articles cleared for public dissemination. The chart shows the number of articles put into the database monthly and the graph shows the approximate number of articles entered into WNC annually.
Slide 5
Compiled by intelligence experts from the OSC, World News Connection is a unique tool for timely monitoring of socioeconomic, political, regulatory, and market conditions worldwide. It is comprised of more than 1,750 non-U.S. media sources from 130 countries to give the user an unfiltered view of what is happening in a specific country or region. The database contains well-known sources such as: <newLine/>Agence France Presse Xinhua Middle East News Agency Press Trust of India Voice of Israel NOTIMEX ITAR-TASS South Africa Press Association It also includes obscure sources and regions like: Guyana Chronicle, Rwanda News Agency, Borneo Bulletin and Fiji News, to name a few. A full list of sources is available on the WNC Web site at wnc.fedworld.gov/sources.html.
Slide 6
This graph shows the geographic coverage of the world. Note that the number of articles is fairly evenly spread across all regions of the world. Criteria for seeking new sources include expanding coverage to a new area, as well as providing different points of view on news in a particular region or country.
Slide 7
There are a number of unique advantages to using WNC. Here are just a few: First of all, users have access to thousands of sources not available elsewhere that provide news from local points of view. Coverage is comprehensive from newspaper and magazine articles (both hard copy and e-copy), television and radio broadcasts, blogs, conference proceedings, technical reports, including journals and grey literature, which provides technical reports before they go to journals. Another benefit is the OSC expert analyses. In addition, local-language articles are translated into English. WNC also is timely. It is updated hourly, and articles are available within 24-72 hours from the time of original publication or broadcast, and sooner if translation is not necessary. The articles are not filtered through Western biases. In other words, the articles say what the locals say not what U.S. reporters and editors think they should say. Most articles are full text. WNC covers 130 of the world's 160 countries, including locations other news services don't cover from a local perspective, like Cuba and North Korea. WNC focuses on significant socioeconomic, political, scientific, technical, security, and environmental issues and events.
Slide 8
Current users search WNC for a variety of reasons. For example, businesses want to know about a country before making an investment there. If there is upheaval in a country, such as in Bolivia several months ago, it may not be a good time to move resources to that country. Obtaining the local view in an English translation saves time and money. Users can also get a historic view of a region on which to base business decisions. Finally, setting up Alerts in WNC ensures that you keep up to date with news from a particular region or country or on a specific topic.
Slide 9
The following example illustrates the type of information you can find in WNC. The record is shown here. At the top of the record is the title, and the date of publication: Feb 24, 2011. The text is an Open Source Center translation of the story from Russian. The bottom of the record shows that the geographic emphasis here is Russia and Eurasia — Note too that the original source language is Russian and the article came from the Moscow RIA-Novosti, a Government information agency.
Slide 10
As you can see, World News Connection (File 985 on Dialog) provides unique information about countries around the world including those that may not be covered anywhere else. You can try World News Connection (File 985), as part of Dialog's Free File of the Month program. Read the story on the Free File Chronolog and try searching File 985! Make sure you are signed up for the Chronolog to see all the news at Dialog. If you have any questions, please contact the Knowledge Center.
Slide 11
This completes our overview of World News Connection. Thank you for your interest in World News Connection.
