 December 1995, Vol. 6, No. 12
'Net dreams
How PressLink will move photo, graphic, text distribution to the Web
At the time the Associated Press was "giving away" Leaf Picture Desks in the early ’90s, some of us argued that the broadcast model of picture service was outmoded.
We contended that newspaper editors should be able to connect to a system that contained low-resolution copies of all the day’s photos, then pick and download only those they needed.
Unfortunately, the bandwidth required for such a system was beyond technology’s capabilities in the early part of the decade; proof of this was found when PressLink, the Knight-Ridder subsidiary established to distribute graphics, tried to distribute photos.
The move to JPEG compression helped the speed issue, but PressLink was obliged to charge a hefty fee to both newspapers and picture providers, such as Agence France-Presse and Reuters.
The reason: PressLink was based on a computer system provided by General Electric Information Services (GEIS) of Rockville, Md., one of the 12 business units of giant GE. GEIS charged a lot for its services, despite the fact that it had trouble putting in modem connections that ran faster than 9.6 kbps.
The PressLink model of browse, download and publish was a good one, though: It was emulated by both NewsCom Inc. of Coral Gables, Fla., and Wieck Photo Database Inc. of Dallas.
And, as PressLink went through management changes, the new team realized there was a better way to distribute news, graphics and photos: the Internet. At NEXPO ’95 last June in Atlanta, we saw the beginnings of PressLink Online, as it came to be called.
With a pilot program that went into effect last month, I decided that PressLink Online’s commitment to World-Wide Web delivery was worth a story. (Conflict-of-interest alert: I have written a weekly column for PressLink off and on for the last four years.)
Who better to cover the new PressLink than Kurt Foss, one of the pioneers of the digital photography movement? Formerly the director of the Electronic Photojournalism Lab at the University of Missouri at Columbia, Foss now is with the University of Wisconsin and a writer specializing in digital imaging issues.
He is also a stalwart of the National Press Photographers Association’s annual Electronic Photojournalism Workshop.
In talking about the 'Net, we thought it would be a good idea to address some of the issues about getting your publication up on the Web. Correspondent Chris Feola runs us through some of the decisions you have to make to get a web server up and running, and he and I suggest some products to use.
And, lastly, I ran across an article in a recent issue of newspaper techniques, the publication of IFRA, the European-based research arm of the international publishers organization.
In it, Kerry Northrup -- onetime technology editor at the Burlington (Vt.) Free Press and former technology editor at Gannett’s Advanced Systems Lab -- discusses how Gannett chose the archiving system it’s rolling out at many of its almost 100 newspapers. His article is reprinted here, with permission.
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Holiday Cheer Desk: Again, we find ourselves a little more cheerful when we realize that the first issue of this little scribble went out six years ago this month.
We here at The Cole Group and The Cole Papers wish you and yours a happy holiday season, and continued prosperity in the new year.
We look forward to serving you in ’96 with more insights into publishing technology.
And thanks for a good 1995.
-- David M. Cole
See also: Hellbox
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