The Cole Digest, Jan. 25, 1995

Gentle Reader,

So, you (or worse yet, your boss) wants a flashy on-line service. You could hit yourself over the head or you could take a look at the amount of time and effort one of these babies can cost.

Think of on-line services as automobiles: The text-based CompuServe guys -- Westchester Rockland's New York Newslink, Detroit's Free Press Plus and Cocoa, Fla.'s Florida Today -- are like the Ford Taurus: Solid, comfortable, no-nonsense.

The America Online crowd of the New York Times, San Jose Mercury News and Chicago Tribune are more like a Mercury Sable: Basically a Taurus with nicer trim (since America Online is a cleverly disguised text-based system, but a text system nonetheless).

Enough of kicking tires and comparing EPA mileage: John Bryan (formerly systems editor of the Cincinnati Enquirer and now of the Los Angeles Times), a correspondent for The Cole Papers, looks at three on-line services (one this week, two next) through the eyes of a manager.

NEW YORK NEWSLINK

Systems Editor Barry Abisch is the chief Taurus mechanic for the Westchester Rockland Newspapers, a Gannett agglomeration of suburban dailies based in White Plains, N.Y.

Abisch is a one-man band: In addition to managing a System Integrators newsroom computer system, plus a bunch of IBM PCs, he has to keep New York Newslink up-to-date five days a week.

Make that "wants to"; it's a labor of love. "I make the time," Abisch said.

How much time? Five to seven hours a week, on average.

Pretty good, and made possible by a lot of scripts Abisch has written on the SII system that automate the scut work. One puts a header atop each story for the CompuServe file description, another strips out typesetting commands ("CompuServe doesn't like quad lefts," Abisch said), and a third writes a script for the popular TapCIS program that uploads all 20 to 30 daily stories in one swell foop.

Lack of staff makes for a bare-bones operation. "We're doing very, very low-key stuff. It's an adjunct to the newspaper, not a new product itself," he said. "And we don't do a lot of things that we could or should do."

Low-key or not, it seems to be working, Abisch reported. Newslink clocks about 1000 accesses a week -- "it's been really picking up since Labor Day," he said.

Some of that traffic seems to be from people planning to visit the Big Apple, so Abisch makes sure entertainment news and reviews get up on the board. Other exchanges are more local.

"Our county hospital is always mired in controversy. So the chairman got on-line a couple of weeks ago and started a dialog with readers," he said. "Usually, we'd interview him, interview the opposition and write a story. This time, we served as facilitators for a direct exchange with the citizens."

Another biggie, predictably, is New York sports teams, and in this Abisch sees a glimpse of the future:

"On-line services tear down the geographic boundaries of how far a circulation truck can go. If you're a Giants fan in another city, you can get a game report on any number of services -- but with us, you can get all the training reports through the week."

Abisch sees these nuggets as evidence that a vein of gold lies nearby.

"You won't see much [on-line profitability] until there's a different technology for getting the data downloaded into the home, probably through cable or fiber optic connections," he said.

"Some day there'll be an interactive application that will allow me to assemble my own paper overnight while I sleep, based on my choices. That's possible right now, but it's slow -- it's not viable."

In his view, newspapers don't have a choice about going on-line.

"I think it's important for newspapers to get involved because if they don't, somebody else will. We're sitting on the information -- now we have the added overhead of making it available in a different way."

That added overhead has its own rewards. "It's really fun to play with this," Abisch said.

Next week: Bryan looks at offerings by Knight-Ridder papers in Detroit and San Jose.

Onward.

\dmc

[THE COLE DIGEST is written by consultant David M. Cole, editor and publisher of the industry newsletter THE COLE PAPERS. The DIGEST is made available to PressLink subscribers every Wednesday at no extra charge. Send comments by e-mail to cole@plink.geis.com. The COLE DIGEST is the property of The Cole Group, a California sole proprietorship. Reproduction in whole or in part without the written permission of The Cole Group is prohibited. Copyright (C) 1995, The Cole Group. Opinions expressed are those of The Cole Group, unless otherwise noted.

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