NPR

The place I turn to for news; I find NPR and PRI radio broadcasts on my local public radio station (90.1 WABE) keep me well-informed. I am always stunned by the great international coverage featured on PRI’s The World, and especially LOVE the podcast off-shoot The World in Words, hosted by Patrick Cox.

National Geographic

The newly-redesigned National Geographic website is an amazing feast of information, culture, photos, archives, and news stories. Readers can submit photos for the site’s gallery as well as potential publication in the magazine; the travel blog and posts are always interesting; and you can find articles going years back.

Digg

Digg.com is a social news website that allows users to “digg” stories, photos, videos, and other online content that has been posted by fellow users. Since the summer of 2008, I’ve been an avid Diggnation fan, which is an online show hosted by Kevin Rose, the creator of Digg.com, and Alex Albrecht, an internet celebrity of sorts. On the show, they discuss some of the week’s top stories, usually with a vague theme of technology but including many random topics as well. It’s entertaining fare, for sure.

The Economist

In case you are not one of the people who reads The Economist in its entire print form each week, and are even one of the people who pay the $100+ price tag on an annual subscription so that others may assume you are informed, this British “newspaper” is one the best sources for international news. And you can read most of its content online for free! So gone are your worries of being an uniformed American, or even an informed-but-broke American– take heart and read.

History News Network

Ever wish there was a place where you could read hundreds of esteemed historians writings? George Mason University has created it. There are hundreds of topics and areas of specialty to browse.

The Times of India

One of the leading English-language newspapers for the subcontinent is a great news source for me, a student of Indian history, politics, and culture. And the Bollywood and entertainment photos are always fun to check out.

Vast Public Indifference

Graduate student Caitlin Hopkins maintains this blog on “history, grad school, and gravestones” from her New England location and perspective. Her posts are brief but numerous, making them fun to catch up on for some knowledge and a few laughs. See especially her love of finding quirky names and ways of describing death on the many tombstones she studies.

Young J. Allen papers

If you’re interested in the subject of my senior history thesis, Methodist missionary Young John Allen, take a few minutes and browse some of the letters Emory University has in their online collection. Some are from him sent to family and friends in Georgia, some are addressed to him, in Shanghai. You can even see the original letters as well, to give you a sense of my own escapades in Allen’s manuscript collection. He was a missionary, publisher, educator, and journalist during his years there, from 1860 until his death in 1907.

NYT Magazine: “Picnic in North Korea”

Article that appeared in NYT Magazine, Oct. 23, 2009, by Korean-American Marie Myung-Ok Lee, about her experience visiting North Korea with her mother.

Little White Girl in China (and it’s not me!)

Stacey, who goes by “Red” on her blog, was my roommate for one month in Yangzhou, China, during the summer of 2007. She has now spent nearly an entire year living in Beijing, studying Mandarin Chinese and furthering her frustrations in trying to understand the Chinese culture and psyche. Although she returned to the U.S. in late July 2009, she has a treasure trove of adventures and musings in her archives, compiled since her arrival in Beijing in August 2008. She has even written a few in Chinese, should you like to tackle them; but the accounts written in English are often funny and insightful, and a great encapsulation of life as a foreign student in modern Beijing, China.