Operational considerations for publishing on the web

Defining the conceptual differences between print and on-line products, Howard Finberg, director of Information Technology at Phoenix Newspapers Inc. in Arizona, characterized newspapers as print, based on deadlines, limited by space, with single links to sidebars, created by editors and generating revenue, while on-line means publishing constantly, with unlimited space and links to sidebars, packaged by producers and generating mostly expenses.

As you evolve an on-line product in a print operation, he said, staff specialization and print-like content must be replaced by people who fulfill multiple roles and work in multiple media. When anyone with the right technology can be the competing publisher in town, quantities of content aren't as important as valuable content, the result of good journalism.

"What we need to do is to put value to our journalism," he said. "That is our expertise, that is our skills set."

Research shows that on-line use is time diverted mostly from television, sleeping, and reading magazines or books, not from newspapers, and many on-line readers are already core newspaper readers. That means on-line as an extension of the core product doesn't really improve value to those customers, Finberg said. The four Rs of newspapers on-line, "repackaging, republishing, repurposing and regurgitation," won't keep customers for the future.

Instead people dig through what Finberg called circles of information on-line, starting with a "highlights" circle, then selecting either tightly edited "in-depth" story versions or going directly to "deep information," which may include background data or archives, where the customer becomes his or her own editor by combing source information.

Rather than being linear, working from headline to footnotes, the customers may jump in at any level and meander from circle to circle.

Database publishing, means understanding the entire process, Finberg said. Gathering news/content for multiple products requires new ways of thinking, learn how you want information to flow in your organization.

Building a foundation for that includes new systems, such as Phoenix's recent replacement of its Systems Integrators Inc. front-end and Triple-I pagination systems with a central database system from CCI Europe. The center of the system should be a neutral format database that allows client access, no matter how information is stored, whether the ultimate destination is film and plates, paper, the Internet, America Online, MSN, Adobe Acrobat, speech or audio, teletext or CD/ROM. Then newspapers must reorganize how they handle the workflow.

"If we don't devise new ways of managing workflow, we'll be overwhelmed trying to handle the data we're collecting," Finberg said.

A production of The Cole Group, Copyright (c) 1997, All Rights Reserved.

Last updated: 25 June 1997.

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