 October 1996, Vol. 7, No. 10
Web workers
Should on-line editorial efforts
be run from the newsroom?
Whether you come down on the side of those who believe that new media are a panacea that will save our beleaguered print publications from obscurity and death, or are among those who see on-line activities as only a waste of time and money, an essential organizational question arises:
Where should the editors who build these digital domiciles reside?
Certainly for me, the answer is pretty clear -- in my vision of the newsroom of the future, there will be not one news desk the way there is today, but many.
The print publication will have a news desk, and sitting next to that desk will be an on-line news desk. And next to that, an audiotext news desk and then a desk that creates CD-ROM packages. Farther down the row, I expect, there will be a news desk that caters to the world of wireless personal digital assistants (PDAs).
Each of these desks will share information, and the work will flow to them from throughout the newsroom. Breaking stories will be routed to the desks that have digital immediacy -- on-line, audiotext, PDA. Longer, interpretive stories will go to the print news desk.
The CD-ROM news editor will be picking from it all, looking for something that will sustain an instant encyclopedia on a particular topic.
For a while I thought this issue was moot. Wouldn't everyone want to do it that way? Turns out I'm wrong (not the first time; certainly not the last). In the last few months we've seen a trend toward moving the entire on-line and new media operations out of the newsroom and creating stand-alone organizations.
The move of Cox Enterprises last summer to consolidate all its on-line efforts -- whether originating at newspapers, radio or television -- is only one example. Others, such as the Houston Chronicle’s on-line operation, which is run by the marketing department, illustrate a truism of this business: If there are 1500 daily newspapers in the United States, there will be 1500 ways of doing things.
Inside, Correspondent L. Carol Christopher outlines how three notable on-line efforts are organized. Her report on on-line activities at or near newspapers in Raleigh, N.C., Minneapolis and Los Angeles indicates there’s a case to be made for both models.
In another morsel of our Oktoberfest, Correspondent Christopher J. Feola reviews the latest release of the Windows NT operating system from dual perspectives -- as a network administrator and as a publishing executive.
Then we move to the Seybold San Francisco conference, seminars and trade show. Correspondent George Powell combed the trade show floor to find a compendium of new products that make digital publishing easier (in media old or new).
Coverage of the Newspaper & New Media Seminar component of Seybold San Francisco is supplied by Teresa A. Martin. We asked her to file on the day-long event on the theory that she would be unbiased when discussing the session, which was co-sponsored by this newsletter and was the brainchild of its publisher.
Lastly, in the Hellbox we encounter more problems at Sysdeco (more ramifications from the big losses last year, and securities weirdness), the revolving door at System Integrators (the chairman of the board is out; four former top executives return) and the sale of DataTimes.
The World-Wide Web and other new media efforts continue to have an impact on print publishing almost daily. Where should editorial workers work? Stay tuned.
-- David M. Cole
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