Subject: A broad set of questions

From: jvncnet!aol.com!twa3

Date: Fri, 11 Mar 94 10:23:10 EST

Sender: jvncnet!marketplace.com!owner-online-newspapers
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Folks,

Allow me to suggest, as this new list swings into action, a brief discussion
about what an online newspaper must be, especially what it must be in order
to *make money* and keep our jobs alive. 
   The net is not where most of us in the newspaper world will be going
online. Information does, indeed, want to be free. On the net, it is all but
born free.
   Let me suggest some assumptions:
   o We will be going online locally, most of us, if at all. Dialup numbers
will be provided with software packages that will mimic AOL and Prodigy, with
menu-driven choices that may cause cyberwhizzes to wrinkle their noses but
which are necessary for us to gain the size of audience we need to support
ads and investment.
   The new technology allows us the 24-hour immediacy of radio and the
versatility and three-dimensionality of a broadsheet/tabloid
pick-your-priority-and-your-level-of-interest publication. Text is no joy on
a screen, but printers and digital assistants will make the information we
make available portable and permanent soon.
   And I suggest that we must work away from the notion of being solely a
daily gig. Perhaps, also, we cannot compete with radio for minute-by-minute
news updates, although that may be a point of contention. I suggest that
newspapers who have interests in radio stations may be able to link the
missions, but straight paper publishers will find the you-heard-it-here-FIRST
mentality cost ineffective.
   We will soon think of ourselves as dialup information banks. We may
establish links with multiple existing libraries and combine them with our
own resources to make new clearinghouses of information, as we already are,
but only ephemerally: We can tell you current events, how to cook, who got
married this week, etc. Online newspapers could give you family trees and
local cookbooks complied from seeral years of Cooks of the Week.
   We can do school lunch schedules, school closings (a nod to a colleague
who thought of that), community meetings (What time is Mom's meeting over?
I'm hungry) and numerous similar items. Furthermore, we can save the
important stuff that people care about, like recipes or weddings or busness
news. Imagine being able to answer when it was that Ellen's daughter got that
promotion, what Janie's boys' birthdays are, and so forth, and all from your
local paper's dialup.
   Also, these questions:

1. If we can read it, so can moneymakers. Shortly after my wedding, insurance
agents called me at work looking to drum up business as my place of work was
listed in my newspaper's wedding announcement. Will we allow that kind of
access? Can we disallow it, feasibly or morally?

2. What will people think of advertising aimed at them? Personally, I find
Prodigy's habit of allowing advertisers to send me e-mail annoying in the
extreme, and if I thought I got more of it because of what I access in the
system, I might be *really* crabby. (Why, I don't know. Sometimes I answer
direct-snail-mail solicitations, if it's something I want.)
   Will people be less crabby about, say, a school supplies ad linked to a
school-lunch menu announcement?

3. As we become information purveyors on a wider basis -- some of us already
have, I know -- what role will the newspaper play in the online product and
vice versa? Chicago Tribune people, tell us: Do people like the little number
in your briefs column "for full text, see online" or do they feel like you're
shortchanging them on paper?

4. How comfortable are we with the wide-band revolution that threatens, and
the accompanying multimedia opprtunities? Will photographers shoot 30-second
videos and take a good frame for the morning paper and put 10 seconds on the
online product? Who picks Hyperlinks? (Imagine a hyperlink between a
Whitewater story and Nixon's resignation speech: The implications are
profound, and yet you could argue the link would be salient. It opens up a
new world of subjectivity.)

5. And finally: The interactive thing. Will we chart to see what people read
and what they don't, and allow it to affect our news coverage? Newspapers
have always been cagey about how much they are a bunch of ads and civically
valuable dry paper-of-record stuff wrapped around the obits. (There's
something: Imagine funeral home ads tied to the obits page. The mind
boggles.) Will we keep that up?

Whit Andrews
Just another guy trying not to become roadkill on the info highway.
The Times
Munster, Indiana
VOX: 219 738 6903
FAX: 219 738 6917
E-MAIL: TWA3@aol.com
Standard disclaimer: The Times isn't my voice, and I'm not its print.

From jvncnet!marketplace.com!owner-online-news Mon Mar 14 10:17:47 1994