Front pages, easier to use

Linked in my reference directory, and for a long time in the sidebar here, the Newseum's Today's Front Pages is a wonderful resource for anyone interested in newspapers. Want to see the front page every day of your far-away home town newspaper? Just go to Front Pages. There are daily front pages there from 532 newspapers in 52 countries.

For years the papers were listed alphabetically by state or country, so you'd have to browse quite awhile to find the one you wanted. Now the Newseum has redesigned their Web site, in anticipation of the coming opening of their new building in downtown Washington, DC. Front Pages now lets you browse by region, click on 'list' to get an easy-to-read list of links, or click on a map.

Once you have a front page displayed (in a large, readable JPEG) you can also see it in a searchable PDF, or print it.

I am struck, looking at today's Miami Herald front page, how much better this is than the small GIF image of the front page, a week's worth, barely readable, that MiamiHerald.com makes available to visitors. The Herald has PDFs of the entire paper, but available online only to subscribers to myherald.com, and they don't make it easy to find out about that on the main website. MyHerald.com is worth subscribing to if you want a better look at all the news in the paper today, and it also includes a sizeable archive.