Pager publishing: A multiline alphanumeric pager such as this can be used to easily send news bulletins.
Paging the news through
a personal digital assistant
Walter Bender wants to put an imp on your shoulder.
Not just any old demon will do, of course. The director of the News in the Future Project at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Media Laboratory wants to haunt you with a digital imp, one that would "whisper in your ear, giving you data on everything you see."
Imagine: You're handed a difficult late assignment. But thanks to your little invisible friend, you're also handed directions to the site, background on what you'll likely find there and the latest related news stories.
That's on the information-gathering side. Bender's digital imp will also be the perfect publishing outlet.
Content providers -- say, a newspaper -- will be able to feed news, continuously, directly to each user (now we call 'em "readers") who will be able to tailor the flow to his or her liking: No sports, or every bit of the sports feed; no comics, or only nonpolitical ones, and so forth.
(Actually, you can think of such a user as just another reader, who -- with 24-hour-a-day access to your reporters and wires -- will be the person who gets to run your news meeting.)
There is one slight drawback to Bender's digital friend: the technology is not quite here yet. Bender's got an answer for that, though.
Ask him to show you what he's got in his pocket, and he'll pull out a little alphanumeric pager. Seems irrelevant ... until he starts scrolling the Reuters wire service.
Here's the point: While many executives in the newspaper industry are focused on elaborate publishing schemes using current cutting-edge multimedia technology, there are other possibilities.
Some of the most exciting involve wireless communications products, ranging from the ubiquitous pager to the Apple Newton.
The information abyss
There has been much talk about the information superhighway. It's a nice analogy, but it's wrong.
The origin of this analogy is clear: Most information now tends to flow in one direction -- journalists write, readers read; broadcasters broadcast, viewers view. The information superhighway analogy was meant to imply that information would begin to flow in two directions -- from the journalist to the reader/viewer, and back again.
But rather than a highway, think instead of an information abyss, with traffic flowing in every possible direction -- similar to the apparently unstructured way that boats, submarines and airplanes all cross a body of water.
The Internet, the cyberspace everyone loves to explore, is just such a poorly charted sea, with wild currents to sweep you away, serendipitous discoveries of untrammeled beauty -- and maelstroms to drown you.
The limited exposure to this interpretation, in place of the information superhighway view, is one reason so many companies are having trouble grasping the challenges and dangers inherent in this new environment.
Right place, right time
Media companies that are standing on the sidelines waiting for technology to settle down -- and for a clear winner to emerge from all these efforts -- may be putting themselves into an inescapable hole.
They may not have the tools to use that winning technology when it comes along. They may set up shop in the information supermarket, but open the wrong stall.
Take Bender's pager -- the one that gets the Reuters wire feed. It's cool: wireless, portable, doable now.
It's also impractical. Would you really want to read your morning news a couple of lines at a time on your pager while drinking your morning coffee?
Bender is the first to admit that his setup is more sizzle than sensible.
"Pagers are a dog [too expensive the way they are presently tariffed] for doing real publishing," Bender said. "On the other hand, they are a great conduit for timely/convenient delivery."
In other words, pagers probably aren't a practical platform for an entire on-line newspaper. But hold on -- they may be just right for another kind of publishing.
Many alphanumeric pagers now ship with e-mail addresses, providing a practical opening for tailored publishing -- instant notification of preselected events. So, for example, if you could be paged any time the price of newsprint rose or fell 4 percent, you'd pony up a few bucks a month for the service, wouldn't you?
Beyond the pager
Take the first Newton -- please. It looks like a baby Etch-A-Sketch; as a communications tool, it's about as functional.
Using its little plastic pencil to write on the small, dark, greenish-gray screen has become a computer nerd parlor game: Write your name, then fall down laughing at the machine's improbable interpretations.
The Apple Newton is exactly what it seems to be -- a cool toy. In that regard, it's just like the first Apple Macintosh of a decade ago -- clearly useless.
The first Mac had just one floppy drive, and you couldn't add hard drives. It had so little memory its word processor was limited to writing letters. Short letters.
But the Macintosh broke ground not by what it could do, but just by existing. Visionaries looked at its graphical user interface and saw the desktop publishing powerhouses that exist today.
And so it is with the Newton and its siblings, such as the Hewlett-Packard palmtop. Where some people see the latest yuppie plaything, others see the portable information appliance people have dreamed of since the day Dick Tracy strapped on his first wrist radio.
Flaws and shortcomings aside, Newton is a wonder.
It weighs .9 pound, occupies the space of an average daily planner (7.25 inches high, 4.5 inches wide and .75 inch thick) and contains the processing power of a desktop computer.
You can already buy a wireless messaging setup for the Newton, and products have been released that strike at traditional news media strongholds.
In real estate, for example, Portable MLS allows real estate agents to access a multiple listing service from their offices, clients' homes or even their cars. For sports fans, Fingertip Technologies and Sports Team Analysis and Tracking Systems shipped a baseball statistics program for the Newton that is updated inning-by-inning.
And at least one newspaper company is already exploiting Apple's new technology. Southam Newspapers of Canada, with 17 newspapers, has signed an agreement to be an information provider for Apple's wireless service, according to Wayne MacPhail, director of Southam Newspapers' InfoLab.
The Newton "is the Model T of PDA and heralds, I think, a whole new breed of computers," MacPhail wrote in an overview of the InfoLab. "I believe there are information products that can be developed for the Newton that leverage Southam's information strengths."
The device itself opens many doors.
"One of the problems with desktop computers is that you need a desktop. Sales reps that are on the road could use a laptop, but often they don't have laps. That is, they're in situations where it's tough to set up shop even temporarily," MacPhail wrote.
"Pen-based devices offer flexibility and ease-of-use that keyboards can't compete with. As well, pen-based machines allow the capturing of digital signatures on contracts, a feature that could greatly speed up and reduce paperwork.
"The new Apple PDAs are the first generation of an exciting new computer type and are worth our attention."
Why would you pay to read yesterday's news in a newspaper when you can get the news that's breaking right now -- plus video, and access to thousands of other services -- on your Newton?
And why would you carry a portable television when you can get live video on a Newton -- while checking your stocks, compiling a spreadsheet for your next meeting and answering electronic mail from Hong Kong?
Think this is all pie in the sky? Consider these bits:
On Oct. 12, 1993, video and audio of a speech by President Clinton was broadcast live over the Internet, the first such broadcast, according to organizers.
Modern operating systems such as IBM's OS/2 are shipping with built-in support for multimedia and Internet access.
Digital audio is now regularly broadcast over the Internet.
More than 30 million computers are on-line with instant access to wire services, government data, the Library of Congress and almost anything else you can imagine.
So is this the end of journalism? Is this when we all get replaced by end users who can access all of cyberspace on their pocket computers?
Quite the contrary.
The electronic deluge of information is just that -- a deluge. While pocket computers, pagers and cellular modems give you access to the wires right at your table in a restaurant, do you really want the entire AP feed to pour over your screen? Who has time for that?
Users are going to need what readers and viewers have always needed: Someone to sort through developments and provide the latest version of a story, instead of 4000 duplicates; someone to find the beautiful or unusual; someone to focus the wild maelstrom of the electronic net.
You know, a journalist.
But this is no time to get smug. For years journalists have fought their own private battles, secure in the knowledge that competition in this field is limited, that no mom-and-pop operation could open up a metropolitan daily or television station.
That was true until now. MacPhail is blunt: "This is a completely different paradigm from the linear story. Newspapers need to change their wetware."
For non-chipheads, computers are hardware, programs are software and brains are wetware. It's not a compliment when techs tell you the problem is in your wetware.
MacPhail is one such messenger.
"Papers that don't get it, die," MacPhail said, "or let someone with a $5000 PC take their market away from them."
Blending then and now
Whatever device delivers the data, newspapers need to assess what they can add to the information mix accessible through computers, MacPhail said in an interview.
"A newspaper's strength is local content," he said. "Newspapers can't be simply a monolithic one-way stream of communication. This wireless stuff and PDAs are really intriguing, but it raises the question of what value is added. A live stock ticker is great to have, but there is the question of analysis. Why buy a newspaper if it is not adding value to the data?
"Take movie reviews. Why should a reader listen to this person? What do they bring to the table? Is it years of experience critiquing movies? Or are they just tired of writing editorials?"
How to blend the old services with the new is McPhail's current focus.
"One of the key things I am trying to pay attention to are looking at things in terms of our core competency," he said. "We have a good on-the-ground news-gathering force. We can add value to national stories. We have to look at adding value in an electronic way. I don't think that's hard.
"The other good thing we do is provide a real sense of community -- something to talk about around the water cooler, which is something a personalized newspaper won't do.
"That is the key core competency for the future. When people have the ability in their hands and homes for broad-band communications, the key thing will be to facilitate a sense of community."
The new lede story
MacPhail has a plan for putting Southam newspapers on-line -- although it doesn't involve anything remotely like any newspaper around now.
MacPhail's newspaper won't have a front page. Actually, it won't have any pages -- or headlines.
It will have buildings. It will have virtual crowds as readers gather around the hottest stories. It will have readers flying slowly overhead looking for points of interest.
Perhaps we'd better let him explain.
"The on-line newspaper may well be nothing like what we have now. For example, it could be a fly-through model. If you wanted to read government news, you would fly into city hall, for example," MacPhail said.
"With a newspaper chain like Southam -- or Knight-Ridder -- you would fly over a map of the United States or Canada, see hot stories, and zoom in. You will know when you see a hot story because you will see a crowd of virtual rubberneckers.
"A newspaper's strength is local content. That must be preserved. Mapping that information on to a construct of that community is probably not a bad way to do it."
Think we're talking about the year 2525? Try this year. It all makes perfect sense to Richard Gingras, group manager for worldwide services at Apple.
Gingras is one of Apple's leaders for eWorld, a new on-line service announced in January that started this spring. eWorld completely discards the publication paradigm, instead utilizing a representation of a town.
Need to do a little research? Head over to the Library. Want to shop? Go to the Marketplace. Interested in the latest scoop? Stop by the Newsstand. (You'll find some familiar names there: Dow Jones Business Information Services, Reuters America, Tribune Media Services, the USA Information Center, INC. magazine and others.)
"The thinking behind the town metaphor from the first was to use it simply from an ease-of-use standpoint," Gingras said. "An on-line system from its very nature is a complex environment. We found through extensive research that people's ability to understand complex software comes from their ability to map out the functions in their minds.
"I strongly believe newspapers -- if they want to, and do almost anything right -- can have an unusually significant role in these new media going forward," Gingras said. "Newspapers have a tremendous information-gathering apparatus. That's their real resource, not the presses. And not just their editorial apparatus, but their advertising content.
"Newspapers could conceivably come out of this more powerful, not less," he said.
While wireless communication and intelligent agents will change our lives, Gingras said, he pointed out that some of the bedrock underlying good publications and news shows will be just as necessary in this new environment.
"Certainly as technology evolves we will see different products, and the physical connection to a phone on your desk will go away.
"I may open up my PDA that's in my briefcase and find certain publications that I like have been downloaded to me overnight while I slept. We'll have publications that keep themselves up to date through the use of intelligent agents.
"But we have agents today. Sometimes they are called editors," Gingras said. "My favorite, though, is David Letterman. We have empowered him to explore our culture and come back with observations."
-- Christopher J. Feola
"An on-line service is even more complex than a piece of software, so we thought it would be useful to give maps and on-line clues through the use of a spatial metaphor, not a publication metaphor. But we will encourage Dow Jones, USA Today and other information providers to use their own metaphors. As an organizational metaphor, a town makes sense."
-- Richard Gingras, group manager, Apple Computer
Also: Wireless for the wary
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