Summary

Stop the Presses:
Publishers Scramble into On-Line Services,
but Payoff Is Unclear

I offer some quotations below. The article quoted is copyright © 1995 by The Wall Street Journal.

This excellent article provides a coherent overview of most of the issues confronting print publishers (mostly newspapers and magazines) as they try to make the move to electronic media. The reporter talked to many key players and provides solid numbers to flesh out the story. The issues include (in my own words):

• Cost: Producing online publications is expensive, and the workload requires newspapers to add staff (and equipment) at a time when newsprint costs are soaring and when print newsrooms face hiring freezes.

• Advertising: No one expects the audience to foot the bill. TV and newspapers are supported by advertising, but so far advertisers aren't flocking to online publications. If they ever do, there could be another problem: They may withdraw their money from the print publications they support now.

• Eat or be eaten: Maybe an online newspaper will cut into the market for the print product. But publishers fear that if they don't go online, someone else will create a comparable product and siphon away their revenues. Either way, the print product loses. Many publishers believe they must go online now to protect their company's future earnings, even if the online effort today is a revenue drain.

• GenX doesn't read the newspaper: Kids who grew up on video games would rather be online, or at least that's what people are saying. (My own question: If what you're putting online is the same text that's in the newspaper, what makes you think the kids want to read it there? The problem may lie in the content, not in the form.)

• Market size: Only one-sixth of U.S. households have computers with modems, this article says. Is the market big enough to justify all this thrashing about? How much bigger will it get? No one knows yet.

• New media: Do print people really understand what this online stuff is about? Ziegler raises the question but does not answer it.

Quotes from "Stop the Presses: Publishers Scramble into On-Line Services, but Payoff Is Unclear," by Bart Ziegler:

"Some experts believe the move on-line represents the biggest change for publishing since the 15th-century invention of movable type. It will alter the very nature of the medium in ways not yet fully understood. Since many electronic newspapers will be updated throughout the day, they run the risk of resembling all-news radio, where immediacy is valued over depth and context. And since electronic editions can offer customized news, readers could retreat into their own narrow interests, hastening what some see as a decline in public discourse."

"Rather than offer a new genre of multimedia presentations with video and sound and snazzy, full-motion color graphics, most efforts use a deadly dull formula of scrolling text with few photos or images.... 'It's very hard for newspapers, with their weighty investment in presses, to realize that there are other ways to tell stories,' says Stephen Isaacs, co-chairman of the Center for New Media at Columbia University in New York. 'They just don't get it.'"

"The on-line editions ... seem to ignore the last century of progress in graphics, page layout and typography.... [P]ublishers are finding that transporting an old medium to a new one isn't straightforward.... [P]ublishers dump masses of material without much thought."

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