When I was an undergraduate German major in the 1960s, one of my professors decided to use Die Zeit as a basis for teaching third-year composition and conversation. I can remember my excitement when he handed me my very own copy of the newspaper. (It was only the overseas edition, but I was unaware of such subtleties at the time.) This was before my first trip to Europe, so the newsprint took on the status of a cultural artifact for me. In graduate school, I became a subscriber of Der Spiegel, and that provided--and continues to provide--a weighty tactile link with things German. About two years ago, something else happened which conjured up feelings similar to those associated with that first issue of Die Zeit: My office computer was equipped with Netscape, and I quickly discovered that this web browser gave me access to the Viennese daily Der Standard. In the course of the year, Die Welt, the Suddeutsche Zeitung, the taz, and numerous other German publications appeared on the screen. The selection will doubtless continue to grow. This is a bonanza for armchair observers of German affairs, but how can it be utilized in teaching German language and culture to American students? My teaching assignment for Spring 1996 included a senior-level composition and conversation course, and I decided to use reading selections on current affairs drawn from the World Wide Web. This decision led to a fundamental question: Is it advisable to let the students surf the net, guided only by their own interests and previous academic preparation, or should the instructor provide reading material and structure? As I found out in the course of the semester, some--but by no means all--students have both the knowledge of and access to computers needed to explore Germanspeaking cyberspace on their own. (Those who do, tend to undertake their explorations in their free time anyway.) In addition, it is legitimate to ask whether the instructor should relinquish primary responsibility for course content and learning strategy simply because new technologies are available. (L oking back some thirty years, one could have allowed students in language labs to listen exclusively to tapes they recorded themselves.) Rather than conducting classes in one of our fully-equipped computer labs, I chose to act as a filter, assembling those materials that I considered appropriate in the context of this particular course and its objectives. Other models are of course conceivable as well. For example, a traditional language class can meet once a week in the co puter lab. Students can be asked to find articles of interest to them and to write a brief summary or report on them in class. It should be emphasized that the course objectives do not remain constant time. Beyond the issue of which language skills to concentrate upon (passive, subjunctive, conversational vs. form l discourse, broadening active and passive vocabulary, etc.), advanced language courses are de fac empty vessels that can be filled with any content chosen by the instructor and/or the program based on certain intellectual (and often emotional) predilections. In this case, I gave full reign to my personal biases. As any intercultural mediator, i.e., language teacher, is painfully aware, most North American undergraduates are ill-informed about not only current events over there, but also the nature of their own society. When such individuals study abroad, they are invariably unprepared for the level of cultural and political discourse characteristic of the European academic milieu. (I hasten to add: still characteristic of this milieu. In the wake