If you are the kind of news junkie that gets a thrill standing before a well-stocked newsstand and reading headlines from around the world, you will love 1stHeadlines, an online service that links to 353 newspaper, broadcast, and online sources.

This unique service offers the top headlines from a selection of international, national, and state news sources in a clean, easy-to-use format.

That's not all. For those who are interested in a topic more than a geographic region, 1stHeadlines provides a list of dozens of subjects from animals to crime to human rights to religion. Each topic indicates how many headlines are available. For a journalist on a beat, this site is an ideal clipping service.

Other useful subject groupings include U.S. Politics, which points to headlines about key political figures and to the general topic of Campaign 2000.

Note to users: 1stHeadlines' filtering system is pretty smart, but not infallible. As is the trouble with all news filters, they find what you say, not necessarily what you mean.

For example, I clicked on Jesse Ventura (I'm getting ready to move to Minneapolis) and there was a headline from the Minneapolis Star Tribune: Editorial: Ventura Could Have Spent His Capital More (the program must have a size limitation for the headline display because when you click to that story it reveals the final word of the headline ... Wisely.)

The second headline was from the Ventura County, Calif., Star: Candidates for Graduation from Ventura County. Sure, it matched Ventura, but it wasn't the Ventura I wanted.

Nevertheless, this is a terrific addition to the marketplace of news aggregators on the web. The site's focus on daily news headlines and the scope of sites it covers makes this an incredibly valuable news resource for journalists and other news junkies.

-- Nora Paul

Nora Paul is a member of the leadership and management faculty at The Poynter Institute. She works with journalists to raise their consciousness about efficient, effective, and ethical research and information usage. She leads seminars in the use of computer-assisted reporting techniques as a means to new kinds of journalism.