A number of these challenges and opportunities have been explored in recent months by a variety of articles that have appeared in the popular press. The following are excerpts from three of them. The first, "Driving a Newspaper On the Data Highway", by Melinda McAdams, highlights a number of important points that newspapers should keep in mind when developing an online publication. The second, "Online or Not, Newspapers Suck", by Jon Katz, examines the problems facing today's print newspapers and the challenges that stand in the way of electronic versions. The third article, "Netizen Caned", by Carl Steadman, is a critique of electronic, or "way new" journalism.
McAdams raises a number of interesting points about how to set-up an online newspaper including the following:
"If you think you can dump the contents of today's edition onto the network and win subscribers, you're wrong. Paper is paper. A screen is something else. It isn't only that you can do different things on a screen. You must. Text on a screen is not newsprint, not a magazine, not a book."
McAdams stresses nine points to keep in mind, mentioning the possibilities for positive features such as footnotes, unlimited length for stories, the ability to search within a paper for exactly the information or articles you are looking for, and the ability to build links to previous stories concerning the same issues. Below are some of what she has to say:
"The invaluable service that journalistic expertise can provide is ready-made trails, via hypertext links. . . If I want to find stories on a particular topic, however, I would not really need an index. I could define a search that located stories containing the words Arafat, Rabin and Jordan for any time period I selected. When the list of matches came up on my screen, I could see the headline and bank in their original font and size, the lead paragraph and the date. When I click on one that looks interesting, I get more of the story. A single entry might read "Arafat (10), Rabin (4), Jordan (1)" -- the numbers telling me how many times that word appears in that story -- and if my main interest is Jordan, then I know not to bother with it. "
"A key to making all this information easy to use is keeping the interface simple. The last thing readers want is a long index or menu at every juncture. They don't have to know exactly what they are going to get when they click on a highlighted phrase -- so long as it's relevant. Because new copy pops up in a window that can be made to vanish with another click, it is simple and straightforward to click, look and decide based on the actual content, not an abstract. (But the relevance of the linked material must be readily apparent, or readers will quickly conclude that most links are pointless and give up on them.)"
"Any news story with a long history can be vastly enhanced by means of attached maps, overviews from past editions and time lines. "
"Anyone who can read can pick up a newspaper and get something out of it. The interface is truly user-friendly. If the electronic newspaper is to be a mass medium, it has to be friendly too. Friendly means that "help" systems must be truly helpful and tutorials should really teach from square one. Friendly means that no user should ever get stuck, not knowing how to proceed. Users should be able to search or browse at will, switching between the two modes."
Katz provides an insightful look at the current state of newspapers and the implications of publishing them online. Some of the more salient points he makes are listed below.
Katz on online versions of newspapers:
"Reading a newspaper online is difficult, cumbersome, and time consuming. There is none of the feel of scanning a story, turning pages for more, skipping easily back to the beginning. The impact of seeing a picture, headline, caption, and some text in one sweep is completely lost. With news glimpsed only in fragments and short scrolls, the sense of what the paper thinks is important disappears. You can't look at a paper's front page to absorb some sense, however limited, of the shape your town, city, or world is in. You can't skip through a review for the paragraph that tells you whether to see the movie or not or skim through movie listings for show times. Much of what still works about a paper - convenience, visual freedom, a sense of priorities, a personal experience - is gone. Online, papers throw away what makes them special."
Even with all of his criticism, however, Katz still sees the possibility of a bright future for newspapers and their online versions. In particular, he cites the online version of Time as an example of a publication that "appears designed not to replace the magazine or plop it into a different format, but to gain a toehold in cyberspace and even absorb some of its values."
Katz has a few suggestions for newspapers as well, stressing content over technology, saying:
"Newspapers might begin to think about reversing their long-standing priorities, recognizing that everyone with electricity has access to more breaking news than they provide, faster than they provide it. They should, at last, accept that there is little of significance they get to tell us for the first time. They should stop hiding that fact and begin taking advantage of it. What they can do is explain news, analyze it, dig into the details and opinions, capture people and stories in vivid writing - all in greater depth than other media. They should get about the business of doing so."
"The institutions of journalism seem in desperate need of some mechanism for re-connecting with an alienated public, and they needn't transform themselves into online publications to do it. An e-mail address on every reporter's stories would help. And gain journalists countless news sources as well."
Katz closes his article with the following quote from a newspaper business man:
Steadman's article examines the creation of a publication known as the Netizen, an online creation of HotWired magazine. The stated goal of Netizen is to offer so-called "way new" journalism, in contrast to traditional coverage of news events, and politics in particular. While Netizen claims to be different, Steadman finds otherwise.
Netizen proposes a the existence of a new economy, Steadman claims, saying:
While Steadman finds the theory that information may ultimately control the economy to be an interesting one, the real concern should be the following:
"What the Netizen fails to acknowledge is that it remains itself a part of the process it attempts to critique. . . Whether or not the reporting medium is "way new" is beside the point."
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