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On Fri, 21 Apr 1995, Jim Sabo wrote:

> On Thu, 20 Apr 1995, madanmohan rao wrote:
> 
>   
> > Commercial Culture Is Transforming The Internet
> > -----------------------------------------------
> >      The non-profit, voluntary, and giving nature of the Internet
> > when it was first created has produced such useful information,
> > that it is "bound to co-opt, if not ruin altogether, the culture of
> > voluntarism that spawned it." The arrival of the "Big 3" commercial
> > online services on the Internet marks the "beginning of the end of
> > the Old Internet." In the New Internet, the information that has
> > been free will not stay that way.
> >                             (San Jose Mercury News; April 16, 1995)

Up until recently, the question was not whether to charge, but HOW.  With 
20,000 publications on-line, an "all-or-nothing" billing arrangement 
would take away the primary advantage of on-line news (gigabytes of info 
to choose from).  As the funds and royalty/advertizing distribution 
become available, the value of on-line news, and on-line ads will go up, 
and the cost/user/megabyte will go down.  Not many people WANT to try and 
locally store 300 gigabytes/day on some local storage system.

The main advantage of on-line is that the demographics are ruthless.  
When a user hits your page, you KNOW it.  The advertizer knows how 
effective his advertizing dollar is immediately.  The media becomes a 
partner in generating the sale.

> Apologies who found this and laughed as hard as I did, but it was kinda 
> buried in there, and I wanted to point this out. Wasn't this the week 
> that the Merc center started charging?
Why do you think they wrote it?

> This does raise an interesting point about papers putting out onine 
> services, specifically, how folks working on the print version feel about 
> the online version, and how those feelings show up in the print version. 
> It seems obvious to me that the writer here either didn't know or didn't 
> care that his paper's own online service was about to start charging, and 
> was as guilty of the "co-opting" as any of the big three.
What will get interesting is the tendency to auction certain pages.  
Positioning on certain home pages could triple your number of hits.  You 
won't be seeing that stupid dragon on netscape much longer.  That's AD 
space.

> I've noticed that reactions in our newsroom about online publishing have 
> been mixed, Some folks see it as a great way to expand there readership, 
> others have seen their stories get better play online than they did 
> inprint. But a great deal of reporter's first reaction was "is this going 
> to cost my job," and have been reluctant to embrace, nay, even learn 
> about the technology. Anyone else out there have any comments on this?

Consider this.  If the facts are streight, and the editor considers the 
copy to be "safe" (no lawsuits to lose), there is not much concern about 
space.  Everybody gets published, and Everybody gets a by-line.

Columnists are simply anyone who can average 1 posting/day.


> Jim

	Rex Ballard
	A columnist on online-news.

Is anyone reprinting my postings?
Please give attribution :-)


From rballard@cnj.digex.net Tue May  2 22:55:49 1995