The Cole Digest, January 17, 1996

Nora Paul of the Poynter Institute is talking about how to re-engineer a newspaper to handle true multimedia:

Text, photos and graphics will be joined with sound and video; this is where television has an advantage over print. Broadcast journalists have always understood how sound and video enhance the words used in reporting a story.

How well are you preparing your reporters to work in a truly multimedia product? If you aren't thinking about all five of these components, you aren't rethinking the product. And once you have rethought the product, it will be obvious that you'll be needing to retrain your content creators.

Imagine General Motors engineers all arriving at work on bicycles, because they don't know how to drive. Pretty absurd, right? Well, many of the news organizations where some of the most innovative news products are being developed share this dirty little secret:

The majority of the work force, the ones responsible for creating the content, know virtually nothing about the ways of the wired world.

A recent survey on the use of new technologies in the newsroom found that most of management's enthusiasm focused on cutting costs, doing things faster and providing more glitz. Using the technology to enhance quality of the information was barely mentioned. In one telling statistic, 79 percent of the newspapers surveyed had computer graphics capability, but only 29 percent had a computerized library -- and even smaller percentages had access to on-line or CD-ROM databases for information gathering.

I have heard of too many news organizations developing an on-line service but providing little or no access to the service in the newsroom. These services are not being used as tools in the creation of the content being sold through these new products.

We all know newsrooms are notoriously bad at providing training for their employees. Rarely does a capital budget for a major outlay in hardware include any budget line for the wetware -- the people who will be operating the equipment. Here are the things the journalist in the era of electronic media must be able to do:

*They need to understand the medium. I can speak from personal experience here -- we started designing our Poynter Institute web site before we had full Internet capabilities, so I had never gotten to really explore the World-Wide Web. A number of assumptions about what to do in terms of content and layout were made that had to be changed once we saw the real potential of the hypertext medium.

Reporters need to explore this medium to envision the possibilities of this new platform for reporting.

*Reporters need to use these new information products in their reporting. How can they be persuasive contributors to the new medium when they are not experienced users of the medium? Access to source documents, opinions of experts, and information that can add context and links is crucial in rethinking the product.

*They need to communicate. Almost without exception, the providers of new news services find that messaging is the most popular feature with users. You can't advertise "write our reporters" and not have reporters respond. There is a style and a "'netiquette" in e-mailing that must be learned, and practiced, or your service's users will be quickly alienated.

Thanks for the excellent thoughts Nora.

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.

[THE COLE PAPERS is a monthly newsletter devoting itself to technology, journalism and publishing. Subscriptions are $139 for 12 issues ($159 outside the U.S.). MasterCard, Visa and American Express cards are accepted. For more information, e-mail COLE, call (415) 673-2424, fax (415) 673-2449 or write The Cole Group, 2590 Greenwich St., Ste. 9, San Francisco USA 94123-3333.]