Abstract: An automatic method and system for retrieving information based on a user-defined profile (e.g. a personalized newspaper). A user-controlled client establishes communication with a stateless server, the server presenting a list of options to the client between the server and the client. The client provides an identification of the user-defined profile. The server engages a first application program, the first application program retrieving the user-defined profile wherein the user-defined profile identifies information which is of interest to the user. The first application program examines a database of information and automatically retrieves a subset of the information from the database based upon which information is of interest to the user as identified in the user-defined profile. The server presents the subset of the information from the database as generated by the first application program to the client.