93 stories selected
1 RTw 09/19 0818 YUGOSLAV AIR FORCE HITS CROATIAN COMMUNICATIONS
2 RTw 09/19 0755 CROATIA BATTLES CONTINUE AS EC PONDERS PEACE FORCE
3 RTw 09/19 0753 ARAB PAPERS SAY MOSCOW WANTS MIDEAST PARLEY DELAYED
4 RTw 09/19 0749 DOLLAR STANDS STILL, SHARES DRIFT LOWER IN …
5 RTw 09/19 0729 EARNINGS GLOOM REVERSES LONDON STOCKS' EARLY GAINS
6 RTw 09/19 0716 SOVIETS NEED 14.7 BILLION DOLLARS FOOD AID, EC SAYS
7 RTw 09/19 0707 IRA SAYS IT KILLED TIMBER YARD WORKER IN BELFAST DOCKS
8 RTw 09/19 0706 BRITISH CONSERVATIVE CHIEF PLAYS DOWN TALK OF …
9 RTw 09/19 0630 FINANCE RATES
10 RTw 09/19 0603 REUTER WORLD NEWS SCHEDULE AT 1000 GMT THURSDAY …
The numbers in column four are the release times of the stories. They flow in from the wires in a continuous stream. Next stop was the UK Newspaper Library. Here, you can search in full-text stories from The Daily and Sunday Telegraph, Financial Times, The Guardian, UK News (with selected stories from The Daily & Sunday Telegraph, Financial Times, The Guardian, The Times/Sunday Times, Today, The Independent, Lloyd's List and The Observer). Searching the UK Newspaper Library costs US$6.00 for up to ten hits. You get a selection menu of the first ten stories found. A menu with an additional ten stories costs another $6.00, etc. You pay US$6.00 to read the full text of selected stories. These rates are added to CompuServe's normal access rates. The news service Soviet Crisis was my final destination. This was just a few weeks after the attempted coup in Moscow, and I was eager for reports. I found the following interesting story from OTC NewsAlert:
OTC 09/19 0750 FIRST ENGLISH LANGUAGE SOVDATA DAILINE IS LAUNCHED
This selection gave me three screens with information about a new online service. Briefly, this is what it said:
"The SovData DiaLine service includes an on-line library of more than 250 Soviet newspapers, business and economic periodicals, profiles of more than 2,500 Soviet firms and key executives that do business with the West, legislative reports and other information."
It also said that part of the database was available through Mead Data Central (Nexis/Lexis), and that it would be made available through like Data-Star, FT Profile, Reuters, Westlaw, and GBI. Undoubtedly, the name has changed by the time you read this. Finally, a fresh story about the fate of KGB. I read another fifty lines, entered OFF (for "goodbye CompuServe"), and received the following verdict:
Thank you for using CompuServe!
Off at 09:03 EDT 19-Sep-91
Connect time = 0:07
Seven minutes. Fifteen typed pages of text. US$6.00. Not bad!