The Cole Digest, March 22, 1995

Wayne MacPhail has a plan for putting Southam newspapers on-line -- although it doesn't involve anything remotely like any newspaper around now.

MacPhail's newspaper won't have a front page. Actually, it won't have any pages -- or headlines.

It will have buildings. It will have virtual crowds as readers gather around the hottest stories. It will have readers flying slowly overhead looking for points of interest.

Perhaps MacPhail, director of Southam Newspapers' InfoLab, explained this better to Christopher J. Feola, the news systems editor at Connecticut's Waterbury Republican-American. Let's go to Feola's notes of the conversation:

"The on-line newspaper may well be nothing like what we have now. For example, it could be a fly-through model. If you wanted to read government news, you would fly into city hall, for example," MacPhail said.

"With a newspaper chain like Southam -- or Knight-Ridder -- you would fly over a map of the United States or Canada, see hot stories, and zoom in. You will know when you see a hot story because you will see a crowd of virtual rubberneckers.

"A newspaper's strength is local content. That must be preserved. Mapping that information on to a construct of that community is probably not a bad way to do it."

Think we're talking about the year 2525? Try this year. It all makes perfect sense to Richard Gingras, group manager for worldwide services at Apple.

Gingras is one of Apple's leaders for eWorld, a new on-line service announced in January that started this spring. eWorld completely discards the publication paradigm, instead utilizing a representation of a town.

Need to do a little research? Head over to the Library. Want to shop? Go to the Marketplace. Interested in the latest scoop? Stop by the Newsstand. (You'll find some familiar names there: Dow Jones Business Information Services, Reuters America, Tribune Media Services, the USA Information Center, INC. magazine and others.)

"The thinking behind the town metaphor from the first was to use it simply from an ease-of-use standpoint," Gingras said. "An on-line system from its very nature is a complex environment. We found through extensive research that people's ability to understand complex software comes from their ability to map out the functions in their minds.

"I strongly believe newspapers -- if they want to, and do almost anything right -- can have an unusually significant role in these new media going forward," Gingras said. "Newspapers have a tremendous information-gathering apparatus. That's their real resource, not the presses. And not just their editorial apparatus, but their advertising content.

"Newspapers could conceivably come out of this more powerful, not less," he said.

While wireless communication and intelligent agents will change our lives, Gingras said, he pointed out that some of the bedrock underlying good publications and news shows will be just as necessary in this new environment.

"Certainly as technology evolves we will see different products, and the physical connection to a phone on your desk will go away.

"I may open up my PDA that's in my briefcase and find certain publications that I like have been downloaded to me overnight while I slept. We'll have publications that keep themselves up to date through the use of intelligent agents.

"But we have agents today. Sometimes they are called editors," Gingras said. "My favorite, though, is David Letterman. We have empowered him to explore our culture and come back with observations."

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 members 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. [THE COLE PAPERS is a monthly newsletter devoting itself to technology, journalism and publishing. Subscriptions are $117 for 12 issues ($135 outside the U.S.). MasterCard, Visa and American Express cards are accepted. For more information, e-mail cole@plink.geis.com, call (415) 673-2424, fax (415) 673-2449 or write The Cole Group, 2590 Greenwich St., Ste. 9, San Francisco USA 94123-3333.]