diff --git a/newspaper/settings.py b/newspaper/settings.py
index 5add9eeb..9e49739d 100644
--- a/newspaper/settings.py
+++ b/newspaper/settings.py
@@ -10,6 +10,7 @@
 
 import logging
 import os
+import tempfile
 
 from http.cookiejar import CookieJar as cj
 
@@ -31,7 +32,8 @@
 
 DATA_DIRECTORY = '.newspaper_scraper'
 
-TOP_DIRECTORY = os.path.join(os.path.expanduser("~"), DATA_DIRECTORY)
+TOP_DIRECTORY = os.environ.get("NEWSPAPER_DATA_DIR") or os.path.join(os.path.expanduser("~"), DATA_DIRECTORY)
+
 if not os.path.exists(TOP_DIRECTORY):
     os.mkdir(TOP_DIRECTORY)