The Cole Digest, January 3, 1996

The frenzy of alliance-making between news organizations and information conduits continues.

Nora Paul of the Poynter Institute of St. Petersburg, Fla., has made the case that newspapers must re-engineer their operations before they can effectively participate in the new media and on-line revolutions.

For the next couple of weeks, we'll give Nora -- the former head librarian at the Miami Herald -- the run of the Digest to talk about her theories:

Many organizations are dropping big R&D dollars into spinning their own web sites and building their own BBSs. This is good -- this is the Information Age, and news organizations must learn how to shift from thinking about themselves as deliverers of news on paper to services distributing information in a variety of media.

Much of the impetus behind this growing interest in alternative products is the nagging concern about new entries in the competition for the news-and-information consumer's dollar. When Microsoft starts hiring journalists, newspaper CEOs start worrying.

Suddenly, the franchise as distributor of news isn't exclusive to the guy with the multimillion-dollar press. Anyone with a $1500 computer can pump out information.

So, just what is it that news organizations can uniquely provide, thus assuring their future as they shift from being tree-killers to providers of killer applications? George Gilder, author of "Microcosm," wrote a 1994 Forbes article, "The ultimate reason that newspapers will prevail in the Information Age is that they are better than anyone else at collecting, editing, filtering and presenting real information."

He's right -- we are. We have a work force devoted to information gathering, distillation and presentation. Our future is assured. This shift to electronic products and production will be easy -- we just have to do what we always did, better than anyone else, right?

Wrong.

Too many newsrooms, cocky in their certainty that they are better than anyone else at presenting real information, are trying to create products -- but they are relying on the same old routines to do so. In many cases, development of those new news products is being done in reverse:

*New product lines are being built without first re-engineering the "plant."

*New technologies are being used to build the same old product.

*Stock is being created without a way to inventory or store it.

In short, newspapers are neglecting three critical needs:

*Rethinking the product in light of the new technology: How can your main enterprise, reporting, take advantage of a multimedia, hyperlinked environment?

*Retraining employees: Your content creators (we used to call them journalists) need to be ready to work with this new medium.

*Recycling information: The electronic stock of information they are creating must be inventoried and stored in such a way that it can be repackaged as needed. This is archiving -- not just for research, but for re-use.

Next week Nora will discuss the specifics of re-engineering.

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) 1996, The Cole Group. Opinions expressed are those of The Cole Group, unless otherwise noted.

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