OSINT-y Goodness, №1 — TheLocal
It’s hard not being a polyglot OSINT researcher. So much information passes by you in languages that you don’t understand. Sure, there’s online translators, but do they really capture the right essence of the information being conveyed?
One thing that is good to have from a native, or local, perspective is news. I’m a big fan of The Local Europe AB, a company which publishes local news in English. Founded in 2004 and based in Sweden, TheLocal provides other business services like translation and copywriting. But, it’s their news service that you should put on your radar.
They provide English language news for the following countries:
Austria
Denmark
France
Germany
Italy
Norway
Spain
Sweden
Switzerland
(Hint: They are easy to find. Their URL is always TheLocal and the two-letter TLD for that country. e.g. TheLocal.at for Austria.)
They offer news in the broad categories of politics, technology, and lifestyle. They then offer a word cloud type of search that you can click on the frequently used terms to find other reported articles. It’s not a comprehensive news source, but what it provides is local news reporting in English that can be overlooked by bigger publications.
What I personally have found TheLocal publications to be most useful for are labor and employment matters. They often will publish information about strikes, hiring issues, or other concerns that could impact a business or workforce.
There are also news items about the very specific topic of everyone’s favorite B-word, Brexit, and how it could affect ex-patriots living in those countries.
They often sprinkle their coverage with articles about acclimating to that local country, like, “11 tips on how to behave in an Austrian sauna.” Although that’s not exactly hard-hitting news, it might be useful to someone.
I would love to see them cover more countries. But, for now, it’s nice to know that there’s something in English to read when your eyes are bleary from researching in a language that isn’t your native tongue and you just want to easily understand, “Nine Spanish culture shocks that I can’t still get my head around.”
Look for their social media outlets by individual country on Facebook and Twitter. Their parent company has a presence on LinkedIn.
