Not your father's AP: The Wire, the Associated Press' new web news service, uses Internet protocols to require readers to visit a newspaper's web site before getting The Wire's pages.

Want comics, weather, TV logs, sports, news on your web site?

The World-Wide Web may well be the Eighth Wonder of the World, at least for today.

No longer a new phenomenon by our accelerated timelines for technical innovation, the Web represents a seemingly limitless repository for information. As such, the 'Net is a vehicle for delivery that seems unparalleled by anything that has preceded it.

Newspapers have flocked to the Web faster than they flocked to Linotypes more than 100 years ago. All that flocking has created the kind of critical mass that makes the entrepreneurially inclined see a ripe market for niche products which help create opportunities for structuring new audiences -- and, most importantly, help newspapers strengthen their grasp on the all-important information franchise.

Among those entrepreneurs are longtime partners in that mission, as they have been in other new media ventures and experiments -- the Associated Press, Universal Press Syndicate and Tribune Media Services -- as well as some interesting new acquaintances who may help the shake the very ontological (look it up) foundations of the industry.

Wired
If you want to see something really exciting -- in Web terms -- take a look at AP's The Wire (oh, those clever folks in marketing).

To get to The Wire, you have to go through a newspaper site. For a glimpse, visit the Dallas Morning News (http://www.dallasnews.com/); Hartford Courant (http://www.courant.com/); the Evansville, Ind., newspapers (http://www.evansville.net); the Star-Ledger of Newark, N.J., (http://www.njo.com/), or the New York Times (http://www.nytimes.com/).

To answer your questions about The Wire, visit the Apme web site (http://www.apme.com/).

Election night provided the first big test of The Wire -- not exactly risk-averse organizational behavior, many would say. But it speaks well for the level of confidence the collective has in its new product.

According to Ruth Gersh, AP editor of multimedia services, things went so well that another group of about 10 newspapers is expected to volunteer to join the election night beta sites in short order.

"There are lots of people doing news on the Web," Gersh said. "We do it well."

"Reuters is all over the Web with financial services and news briefs. But their tack is different because they can go directly to the user," she said. "But we're a newspaper cooperative, and we provide our services to newspapers wholesale."

Noting that AP "covers news very, very fast," she started talking about my favorite part of my cybervisit to The Wire: a headline window, automatically updated, untouched by human hands.

"It comes in, it flows out," she said. "It can turn any newspaper web site into a 24-hour news service. We did the headlines we did instead of the top 10 headlines, because most people will see those on the front page anyway.

"But people are fascinated by the flow of news and headlines: You can look at something that says a cat falls from a tree and dies, and the next minute Clinton wins the election.

"But that's how the news works and I find that fascinating," said the nearly 19-year veteran of the AP, "let alone somebody who doesn't normally have that kind of access. It's a lot less mediated. And while I wouldn't want to abdicate organizational or gatekeeping responsibilities -- it keeps us from losing the serendipity factor -- and respect the general function of information in a democracy as well."

Once you get to The Wire, you'll find a page that's localized for each newspaper: a slot for one of the paper's major organizers, a logo, a back menu that lists sections of the member's site.

"You could be in our business section," said Gersh, "and go back to Evansville sports, news or business, plus get a local ad opportunity. The location where it now says 'back to participating members' at the bottom, will be available for a local ad."

And saving the best for last, she added, "The newspaper gets to keep all the revenue."

How does it work? A local affiliate puts in a link or mini-link to The Wire on its site, then sends AP its logo, links for the menu and local ad space (the ad stays at the local site).

The AP provides a logo template from Adobe Photoshop, a list of addresses for the sections, and a Perl script for generating passwords to ensure that visitors to The Wire have visited a newspaper site first.

Newspapers are charged by the traditional AP formula: print circulation. "When and if a standard for measuring audience is accepted by providers and advertising, we'll switch," said Gersh. "There isn't one now, so we use the ABC [Audit Bureau of Circulation]."

Further down the line, Gersh said she expects increased customization.

"Right now The Wire is sort of like network news. You go to the local NBC affiliate and watch the local affiliate. Then if you stay tuned for the national news, everyone sees the same thing. It's a good analogy for what The Wire is right now, and there will be newspapers who want it like this.

"But there also will be other newspapers who want more customization either in look or news, or members who want to do the whole thing themselves. They can already do that with the feed."

In the next technical generation, Gersh expects that the AP will be able to use tools that it's developed for site management and allow newspapers to do "more picking and choosing" for themselves. Gersh also expects to see a new search function "any day now."

(And sometime in 1997, AP expects to announce a separate archival service -- once the business model for setting charges is worked out, along with some technical issues about keeping the archive "clean," especially in terms of how corrections and other everyday bumps in a fast-moving news organization get handled.)

Gersh would like to make more foreign news available, and to create sites and front pages that are "non U.S.-centric."

"We have the material, but not the bodies, to do that right now," she said. "The content on the site now is a fraction of the AP content in general. We have foreign language wires. We have video (audio, photos, graphics ...)."

The 20-person staff draws from the full range of AP services.

"We don't generate any content for this site right now," Gersh said, "but when we get our arms around the amount of content that the AP already generates/produces, we can start looking at how content can be better presented and put together for web use, and what do we have that we need that we're not already getting."

See you in the funny papers
OK, you've got great on-line content -- wire, video, audio, weather, features, columns, whatever. But in a deeply private corner of your being, you feel your web site lacks something important.

Comics. (Perhaps the thought of mentioning it to a colleague leaves you feeling like one of those adults in the sugar-frosted flakes commercial.)

You're not alone. Meeting the demand for delivering your favorite comic strips is Universal New Media, an offshoot of the Universal Press Syndicate.

Bill Mitchell, Universal's editor and director of development, said that "because the syndicate regards newspapers as our most important customers, we wanted to devise a system that worked for them, and also for our creators. The two main issues were security and revenue -- we didn't want to just put today's Cathy or Garfield or Doonesbury up on the Web where people could bookmark them and bypass the newspaper.

"We also wanted to enable the newspaper to generate revenue for them, for the creators and for us."

The syndicate contacted KOZ Inc. of Raleigh, N.C., which built a back-end system, UClick, that generates a page on-the-fly. The web user clicks on the comic strip link at a newspaper web site and a page is generated with the current version of the strip.

In addition to addressing security and revenue issues, the advantage of the UClick environment is that a 14-day archive is generated. If you miss your favorite strip for one day, you don't have to dig through a big stack of recycled newspapers to find it.

Mitchell said features like the archive are important because, as is true of just about everything, comics are easier to read in print than on-line.

"If you're simply looking for today's version, it's easier from the doorstep than the computer," he said. "The advantage of web publishing is areas that go beyond that single dimension."

Another example of added value on the Web is what Mitchell calls Much More Doonesbury or Much More Cathy -- it's a link to the syndicate's public site which provides a deeper archive, background on the creator, and a message board for reader comments.

Or if you have an attack of Doonesbury nostalgia -- I loved Garry Trudeau's Watergate strips -- you can call up a deeper archive which includes strips from his college days.

Fees are based on a "relatively small percentage" of what a newspaper is already paying for the print version of a feature. And like The Wire, Universal New Media's UClick offers newspapers opportunities to sell ad space and keep the revenue.

A second ad space is reserved for national ads that the syndicate sells and whose revenue -- more good news -- it shares with the newspaper.

Mitchell believes that over time, popular brands like comic strips will enable a newspaper to bring in more revenue in local sponsorship of a particular feature than it pays in fees.

"With the traditional model, you buy various features for the printed newspaper with the idea that in the end it will increase the overall quality of the newspaper to the point that it is so attractive to readers and advertisers that it will be profitable.

"It is different with the electronic syndication world," he said. "You can make a judgment for each feature, add that feature and then sell a sponsorship for more than it cost to buy.

"The performance measurement is rigorous for each feature: Will it bring in more than it costs or not?"

Mitchell suggested, however, that it is still smart for publishers to take the longer view of their web activities because advertising has not developed to the point yet where each and every feature is profitable.

"You need to build an engaging site to bring in enough traffic to make the site profitable," he said.

Sports, weather, TV
What would a newspaper -- or otherwise -- be without the weather and TV listings?

For the weather, Chicago-based Tribune Media Services has worked for years with Weather Central out of Madison, Wis. TMS recently introduced its interactive form -- http://www.webpoint.com/weather/info/ -- and anticipates some expansion into areas such as ski or travel reports.

Tribune Media also has launched Webpoint (http://www.webpoint.com/) to provide 15 features modules, including daily horoscopes, puzzles, movie reviews, food articles and reference material. You can anticipate modules on travel, weddings and holidays (Christmas, Hanukkah and Kwanzaa).

Jay Fehnel, general manager for electronic information services, said the business model for Webpoint is based on things that Tribune has learned in its four years in the audiotext syndication business. Although there are similarities in the nature of the different modules each offers, Tribune has engaged in "pretty substantial development" to give the graphics their look and feel, and to create technical solutions that make the interactivity really work.

Fehnel says that while charter subscribers have all 15 modules, most newer clients are buying more than one, but not all. Cost varies by the complexity of the module.

While you're surfing through Webpoint, detour past TV Week Interactive (http://www.tmstv.com/). Users can view two weeks' worth of listings at once, and in areas with lots of cable systems, can get an exact list with cable numbers in place.

Barbara Needleman, vice president for database and advertising products, provided an even more compelling option for an inveterate old-movie watcher like me: I could customize a list of my favorite channels (10 lists per household).

But wait! I can also search for Alfred Hitchcock movies made between 1940 and 1960.

Needleman really made my day when she told me I could search for all of Clint Eastwood's movies. She did happen to mention that you can search for sports programming as well (the Chicago Bulls, for example?).

Federate
The boundaries of the cyberworld seem to expand by the minute, so to keep some sense of equilibrium more than 900 newspaper people doing new media have joined the Newspaper Association of America's professional society, the New Media Federation.

Melinda Gipson, NAA's director of new media business development, said the foundation provides methods for these people to interact with one another via The Digital Edge (http://www.naa.org/edge.html). The discussion is for members only, Gipson explained, a place for sharing ideas about marketing and new content.

Access to the list is restricted, but Gipson provided a demo user for loyal Cole Papers readers (name: learnd15; password: vi9tame), guaranteed to be good through the first week in December.

In addition to on-line contact, members can attend an annual conference; in 1997, it will be linked to the NAA's marketing conference, but in 1998 it will be held in Orlando, Fla., in conjunction with Connections.

As your head spins with all the marvels you encounter, keeping a couple of things in mind may help you keep your perspective on the wonders of print vs. the wonders of bits: