News
With a Technological Twist
For a taste of the future of news, check
out the following sites, each of which
has at least one futuristic element:
Online Newspaper Sites
• Boston.com [http://www.boston.com]:
An early example of convergence, this
Boston, Massachusetts, area Web site combines
the home page of the Boston Globe
with links to the home page and video
clips from New England Cable News. It
markets a downloadable, electronic facsimile
edition that is an exact copy of the hard-copy
version for a fee, providing both downloadable
and wireless editions via AvantGo and
AT&T PocketNet. It is also part of
the National Newspaper Association’s (NAA)
local news gateway, accessible from many
portable devices.
• CSMonitor.com [http://www.christiansciencemonitor.com]:
The Christian Science Monitor Electronic
Edition is an example of a successful
combination of “fee” and “free.” The Monitor
charges students, teachers, and non-newspaper
subscribers $2 per month for Monitor Extra,
a personalized edition and e-mail notification
service. It also markets a “Treeless Edition,”
an exact facsimile of the print newspaper
in .PDF format, and has a PDA edition.
• CJOnline [http://www.cjonline.com]:
The Topeka, Kansas, Capitol-Journal,
winner of three Edgie awards, has been
recognized for its legislative coverage,
which includes bill tracking, audio clips,
and weekly diaries of politicians, as
well as for its sports coverage, which
includes databases and statistical comparisons.
• HeraldNet [http://waterfront.heraldnet.com]:
The Everett, Washington Herald
was recognized by a 2002 Edgie in the
public service category for its creation
of a participatory site in which citizens
could use interactive technology to illustrate
their vision of a waterfront redevelopment
project. The feature also includes a photo
gallery and a documentary video.
• Metromix [http://www.metromix.com]:
This site was chosen by its colleagues
to be the best food, arts, and entertainment,
or “vertical” guide. Developed by the
Chicago Tribune in partnership
with ChicagoSports.com, CLTV.com, WGN.com,
and OpenTable.com, the latter a restaurant
reservation service, the site features
professional and well as reader reviews
and information for tourists as well as
residents.
• My San Antonio.com [http://www.mysanantonio.com]:
Operated by the San Antonio Express-News
and KENS-5, this site has launched a News-On-Demand
streaming video “jukebox,” which allows
viewers to select segments of video reports
in which they are interested, and features
audio Spanish lessons and quizzes.
• NewsOK.com [http://www.newsOK.com]:
This is a partnership of The Oklahoman
with KWTV News 9 that fully integrates
text with video and audio presentations
in the headline listings.
• Spokesman-Review.com [http://www.spokesmanreview.com]:
The Spokesman-Review in Spokane,
Washington, has an interactive team working
to involve newspaper readers as sources
for stories, some of which feature slide
shows of photographs and audio. It has
even coached citizens in writing accounts
of their personal experiences for the
site. The newspaper presents “Newstracks,”
clusters of archive articles and background
information on hot topics, and a “Teens
Only” section—”for teens, by teens.”
• StarTribune.com [http://www.startribune.com]:
Like many other newspapers, the StarTribune
(Minneapolis) is using its Web services
to generate and support active communities.
It provides space in its Communities section
and technical assistance for nonprofits
to post organizational information. In
cooperation with KTCA-TV and Minnesota
Public Radio, both public broadcasters,
it sponsors in-person gatherings, in which
participants from around the state are
linked via videoconferencing, and covers
the results in its online Minnesota Citizens’
Forum section. Its Talk discussion forum
covers public affairs as well as gardening,
motoring, and travel, among other topics.
The site includes multimedia coverage
of news events, and the newspaper also
publishes a customizable portable digital
edition called News To Go for use with
PDAs and cellular phones.
• WashingtonPost.com [http://www.washingtonpost.com]:
Winner of the Edgies for best news presentation
for 3 years in a row and Yahoo! Internet
Life’s choice for best newspaper site
of 2002, this site of The Washington
Post is distinctive for its news analysis,
timeliness, and multimedia coverage. Readers
might want to check out “Phoenix Rising”
[http://www.washingtonpost.com/
wp-srv/flash/metro/phoenix/phoenixRising.html],
a multimedia feature about the attack
on and rebuilding of the Pentagon, in
which first-person accounts were solicited.
The Post also offers a free, e-mailed
personalized news and entertainment service
and a variety of downloadable or wireless
editions.
Other News Sites
• DEBKAfile [http://www.debka.com]:
This fascinating (and very frightening)
example of an independent, free, niche
service is updated frequently. It reports
intelligence, politics, and terrorism
from an Israeli perspective and markets
annual subscriptions to its affiliated
newsletter, Debka-Net Weekly.
• U.S. News Archives on the Web [http://www.ibiblio.org/
slanews/internet/archives.html]:
Maintained by volunteers from the News
Division of the Special Libraries Association,
this is the best place to access U.S.
newspaper home pages and direct links
to archives, along with listings of available
archived dates and pricing.
• News Is Free [http://www.newsisfree.com]:
This aggregator Web site is the site for
you if you just can’t get enough news
and don’t want to miss anything. It gathers
current news from over 3,170 Web sites
and news services, including Web logs,
in many languages. Users can subscribe
to such personal interest channels as
wellness, education, culture, urban legends
and folklore, books, celebrities, automobiles,
and sports, as well as professional interests,
many originating from the sites of top-quality
publications.
And, why not take a deeper look at your
own local newspaper’s Web site? You’ll
never know what interesting features you
might find until you take the time to
thoroughly familiarize yourself with it.
The NAA’s NewspaperLinks gateway [http://www.newspaperlinks.com]
is a good starting point.
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Do You Go Online for
News?
If so, you’ve already got a taste of … ‘the future.’
If
you go online for news, you are part of a growing plurality
of Americans who do so. Almost half of U.S. Internet
users, 48 percent, now use the Internet for news, about
the same percentage who use it for entertainment, according
to a May 2002 survey by MORI Research.
And despite the proliferation of news “content providers”
on the Internet, studies show that people are increasingly
turning to newspaper sites for their online news. While
CNN, MSNBC, and Yahoo! News top the list, nine of the
Internet’s top 20 most popular news sites are run by
newspapers.
Since anyone can now enter the information marketplace,
and since there is already a panoply of new information
delivery systems, we have to wonder how we will be getting
our news in the future—say in 5, 10, 15 or 20 years.
Will hard-copy newspapers and their local news-gathering
horsepower still be around? Will news consumers be primarily
readers or primarily viewers?
We’re not alone in wondering what the future will bring.
There has been a flurry of studies and special reports
examining everything from the potential market to the
technologies and the economics. The studies were conducted
by the NAA [http://www.naa.org],
the Online Journalism Review [http://www.ojr.org],
the Media Center at the American Press Institute [http://americanpressinstitute.org/NewsFuture],
the American Society of Newspaper Editors [http://www.asne.org/index.cfm],
and New Directions for News [http://www.newdirectionsfornews.com],
as well as numerous research firms.
The newspaper industry is contending with some worrisome
trends—a decline in daily print newspaper circulation,
little interest from younger audiences, transfer of
loyalties among some readers to the Internet, and a
recent economic downturn that has affected advertising
revenue.
Signs of Change
Years ago, newspapers started experimenting
with online delivery as a fringe activity, primarily
as a reaction to a perceived marketplace threat. Now,
online services are well integrated into the mainstream
of newspaper operations and strategy, and emerging trends
show us where the future is leading.
Here are some examples of these trends:
- New fees for new kinds of services. Many
newspaper sites have already begun to charge for archived
articles. Some, such as The New York Times,
have begun to “package” news archives and video clips
on popular subjects, such as sports or authors, and
charge a flat fee for each package. Barriers to charging
for information are coming down. An NAA study found
that at least half of those who purchased something
online are also users of online news.
- Converging delivery systems. Our neighborhood
electronics outlets already carry “smart” telephones
that combine phone communications with personal information
management and wireless data communications, along
with hand-held personal digital assistants that can
browse the Web. We can already watch television and
listen to radio on our personal computers. Content
providers have already begun to design services specifically
for these converging media delivery systems.
- Multimedia “programming.” Newspapers are
already teaming up with television stations to broaden
their access to multimedia resources. However, the
uptake of broadband, required to deliver quality multimedia
content, has not been as rapid as industry experts
had hoped, and broadband is expensive at both ends.
Only 16 percent of U.S. households now have connections
to the Net. So, newspapers are managing with existing
technologies.
- Services for wireless and other mobile devices.
Now reaching only elite markets that can pay for both
retrieval device and a content service, downloadable
and wireless editions of newspapers are becoming available
for the Palm or Pocket PC. The industry has also developed
an experimental wireless local news gateway, Lngate.com,
which links users to participating newspapers, and
is discussing packaging and marketing options with
communications carriers.
- Facsimile editions. Digital replica editions
read via a computer, for which subscribers pay separately,
are becoming increasingly popular. These may be the
forerunners of the portable digital newspaper.
- Independent competitors. Technology is making
it possible for individual writers to post their opinions
on current affairs. Web logs, some of which challenge
majority media news coverage, are becoming more numerous
as well as popular with Internet users. Awareness
of them has grown since the 9/11 attack when Web logs
proved more capable of covering and building community
around rapidly changing events. Newspapers are beginning
to co-opt the form by supporting Web logs written
by popular columnists.
Visions of the Future
An NAA forecasting process begun in 1999 concluded that
these electronic newspapers could be a bridge between
print and newer delivery systems that would not only
attract new readers but would avoid some of the printing
and delivery costs of traditional publishing.
Among the fascinating forecasts about life in the future
by luminaries whose writings were scanned for the Horizon
Watch initiative, those of Roger Fidler were most closely
related to newspaper futures.
According to Fidler, a former director of new media
for Knight-Ridder who now directs the Institute for
CyberInformation at Kent State University, we will see
the eventual complete transformation of newspapers and
magazines to digital media, either through online publishing
or on portable, magazine-sized “tablets.”
Newspaper “tablet” editions will incorporate audio-video
clips, and digital editions will incorporate community
forums enabling readers to interact with journalists
and community leaders. Content will be marketed in branded
“packages.” Intelligent agents will routinely find and
filter cyber-information to match individual profiles.
Paul Saffo, who directs the Institute for the Future,
sees the emphasis in news services moving toward context
or point of view rather than on content alone. In his
scenario, consumers will be willing to pay for “context
engines” and individual news analysts will license their
viewpoints for use in these search engines in exchange
for royalties. Saffo believes people’s use of the Internet
will shift from people seeking information to people
“accessing other people in information-rich environments,”
according to the Horizon Watch summary of his ideas.
In the scenario projected by participants in Advertising
Age’s Future Forum, advertisers, marketers, and
editorial services will “meet” in an open forum it calls
the “consumer-driven zone.” Consumers will have complete
control over the advertising messages they receive.
New kinds of “infomediaries” will facilitate interaction
between consumers and advertisers about products, services,
and related issues.
The newspaper industry is particularly excited about
the prospects for “electronic paper,” which promises
to offer more in flexibility, formatting, and portability
than any of the other electronic delivery devices. In
development at several corporations and anticipated
in the market by 2005, these foldable sheets of plastic
material can be used in the same ways we use newsprint
today. The exception is that it can be continually updated
through wireless communications and can display video
as well as audio.
Hurdles to Cross
There is still some lingering doubt about whether newspaper
organizations as we know them can survive this period
of vast technological transition and thus whether they
will be around to play the leading roles most forecasters
expect.
Here are some of the hurdles that have to be crossed:
- Solving the economics conundrum. The popularity
of online news sites does not always translate into
additional revenues, either from readers, who are
reluctant to pay for what they think they can get
free elsewhere, or from advertisers. Recent surveys,
however, seem to indicate that online newspapers are
doing much better than just a few years ago, when
very few of them were actually profitable.
- Fee vs. free. Over 12 million consumers
paid for online content in the first quarter of 2002,
according to the Online Publishers Association. Year-over-year
sales of news alone rose 55 percent, according to
the same study, but revenues are still small. Pornography
and gambling aside, about 1,700 Web sites now charge
for online content, a $675 million business in 2001.
While The Wall Street Journal [http://wsj.com],
the pioneer in this information-for-a-fee market,
was the only newspaper in the top 25 money makers,
in second place after real.com, six other news providers
were on the list.
- Cannibalization of print editions. Despite
the success of online newspaper sites and the trend
toward their profitability, there has been a decline
in weekday readership of hard-copy newspapers among
Internet users, according to a Clark, Martire and
Bartolomeo study in 2000. This raises the issue of
whether ad or content revenues from online sites can
make up for losses from cannibalization. Local and
national TV have been negatively affected by Internet
use, but weekday newspapers have been affected more.
Moving Toward Synergy
Between Digital and Print
Despite the challenges, we can safely assume that most
newspaper Web services will not only survive but expand
and become far more interesting in the future.
Today’s newspaper publishers, who are already embracing
electronic publishing and interactivity with their readers,
have come a long way from believing that new media are
a threat to their business. In fact, many see them as
an essential opportunity. The more publishers adapt
to new technologies, the more they will attract younger
readers who are now less involved with newspapers as
with television and the Internet. That’s good news for
the home consumer.
As MediaNews Group CEO W. Dean Singleton noted at a
recent industry conference covered by the AP, the industry
is aware that the Internet involves a “massive transfer
of power” that is changing the relationship between
reader and publisher. “We need to be part of this shift,”
he said. “We need to be so immersed and intertwined
that we are both a driver of change and a beneficiary.
And we do that by accelerating and refining the synergies”
between the Internet and print publishing.
Rob Curley, director of new media at the Topeka
Capital-Journal, says news sites will not be something
you visit but rather something you experience, requiring
publishers to have all kinds of “definitive” archives,
video, message boards, outside resources, and even unedited
text.
“I want to give our writers more tools to better help
them tell their stories,” he wrote in a contribution
to the “Future of News” section of the Online Journalism
Review, “and I want to help our readers gain a better
understanding of the subject because of it.... It’s
all about giving everybody everything they could want
to know, and letting them step into the story, but putting
it all together in a very intelligently laid out, easy-to-navigate
way that’s user friendly. Yes, it’s overkill ... but
it’s overkill with love.”
Now, that’s something to look forward to.
Wallys W. Conhaim
is a Minneapolis-based independent consultant providing
research, planning and analysis in the field of interactive
services. |