NewsLab

More than a tool or a toy, Internet means work to me. Not because I don’t like it, but because it really pays my rent. After college I started working in the online edition of Publico, a Portuguese national newspaper, and the Internet (we call it ‘the net’) is a big part of my work, since I use it not only to search news, find contacts, get in touch with people, but also to publish the news I write. And I can say to you in the last years the number of our online readers increased amazingly.

Nowadays everything is online, there is no company, public service, association or school that as not a web page. That is a huge help to the journalists task, and sometimes I have to force myself to pick up the phone to talk to someone rather than send him an email!

I can make you a big list of the web sites I visit regularly (my favorites list really needs to be organized), but there are some essential like BBC online (it as everything, I mean really everything), probably the best news website worldwide; Britannica online is essential when you need to find and confirm information, but Wikipedia is also useful; CIA World Factbook is very good when you need to know something about a country; and of course when something happens somewhere abroad, you have to have local information and for that nothing like ‘planète presse’ in Courrier International website. Well, and if you want to go to Portugal on vacancies you have to see first this usefull website.

Now, is the time to star bloging, because until the arrival in Alexandria I had this passive attitude towards weblogs, I read them but I never thought starting one.