The Cole Digest, Feb. 1, 1995

Gentle Reader,

We're addressing the issue of whether it is easier to set up an on-line service or pound yourself silly. John Bryan, an assistant systems editor at the Los Angeles Times (who is also a correspondent for the witty, urbane Cole Papers newsletter), took us to Westchester Rockland Newspapers last week. This week he visits two Knight-Ridder papers.

DETROIT FREE PRESS PLUS

Minding the store at Detroit's CompuServe outpost are two veteran Free Press staffers: Director John Smyntek, a former features editor, and Associate Director Rick Ratliff, ex-reporter and computer columnist.

They spend a couple of hours loading stories each morning, using a variation on the Westchester method: strip out the codes, then dump 'em into the CompuServe hopper.

Does the text-based nature of CompuServe hobble Detroit's on-line efforts? Nope, says Smyntek:

"CompuServe is easily accessible -- you don't require a lot of software. Besides, CompuServe offers on-line video and pictures, so even though they're text-based, they're a lot more than that.

"We're already offering multimedia stuff," Smyntek said. "There's a real hunger for video products -- live animation, video downloads, pictures. People want to see these things; people will download them. In fact, CompuServe says we're one of the best download forums around."

But the point is that all this maintenance can be done by two people, Smyntek said. "It's a simply managed system."

OK, we'll give points for ease of use, which obviously translates into fewer people shoveling coal into the on-line boilers. What about the larger newsroom?

In today's frantic newsrooms, who has time to log on to discuss yesterday's stories with an itinerant mojo salesman from Carbuncle, Pa.? But if you are going to go on-line, you have to go on-line with the readers.

How does Detroit do it?

"We gave 15 newsroom members essentially free access to CompuServe, and a number of others have free access to the forum," said Smyntek, noting that while they're in the forum the CompuServe clock is not running. "The level of cooperation from the newsroom has been good. Unfortunately, out of the 15, four have left the paper. So we're rebuilding that.

"I don't know what our next step is," Smyntek said. "We'll want to respond quickly to challenges that come our way," not the least of them being a rumored foray into on-line services by the rival Detroit News.

MERCURY CENTER

Have you, the America Online subscriber, logged on?

Have you, the Mercury News reader, seen the tags in the printed paper pointing to audiotext, fax and on-line additional information?

Are either of you aware of NewsHound, the collect-it-yourself electronic newspaper kit the San Jose Mercury News just launched? Twenty-four message boards, nightly chat sessions -- you think San Jose could do all this with just two people?

Guess what? It can't.

To get this mammoth job done, the Mercury News, which is basically framing the on-line discussion with its aggressive, inventive Mercury Center service, uses 17 paid staffers plus about three dozen volunteers (who receive on-line time free).

"Our approach is that integration with the printed paper is the core quality of Mercury Center," said On-line Editor John Murrell. "If you don't see the paper, you don't appreciate the way it's integrated."

The daily paper, classifieds included, goes up to America Online overnight, thanks to a lot of scripting on the Mercury News System Integrators front-end, which automatically splits the SII film dump into pre-assigned categories on AOL. Then there are 300 or so daily supplementary stories that are manually mapped to AOL categories and posted as well.

It's a big job that's drawing 120,000 accesses a month and attracting attention all over the industry.

"People are going to school off us, but everybody's going to school off everybody else at this point," Murrell said. "There's a general acceptance that nobody knows what's going to work here, but everybody accepts that it's time to go to work on this and be ahead of the curve."

Mercury Center is branching out into the World-Wide Web as well, Murrell said. The WWW is a uniform method of addressing and sending data over the Internet, which supports graphical user interfaces, hypertext, multimedia -- and advertising.

"In one sense, it allows you to use typography and graphics more easily than AOL," said Murrell. "One of AOL's drawbacks is that in the end, what you have is a bunch of headlines to click to choose stories -- you're missing the visual cues you have in the printed paper to guide the reader to page elements, so it's kind of a flattening effect."

The Web solves that problem. Items can be viewed using a variety of programs, including the freeware Mosaic interface that runs on all kinds of platforms.

If you want your Web home page to look like a newspaper, you can design it that way, though there are probably better ways to design it. The point is, it's free-form, which the other services aren't. That bodes well for both news and advertising.

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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