Subject: Re: History question! From: joannm@pls.com (Jo Ann Mandinach) Date: Fri, 9 Jun 1995 18:59:03 -0700

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Thanks Steve, someone else who remebers.  A few inline comments on what I
remember about all that from my early days at Dow Jones News/Retrieval.
Others should add their perspective, too, to contribute to to those
collective memories.

At 5:14 PM 6/9/95, Steve Yelvington wrote:
>> Are there any pages or resources out there on the history of on-line
>>publishing?
>> For example, did the first on-line newspapers "do-it-themselves", with
>> staff hired for the purpose, or did they hand over raw material to existing
>> Internet providers? Who were the first?
>
>Internet providers? Not in 1980.
>
>There were U.S. newspapers experimenting with online publishing on
>CompuServe fifteen years ago. The Minneapolis Star and Tribune, the
>St. Louis Post-Dispatch and several others were part of that
>experiment, which I think actually went online sometime in 1981. It
>was an issue in a 1980 strike at the S&T.

Correct me if I'm wrong, Steve, but weren't those services limited to
Today's News sorts of features in menu-driven format?  Not much depth.
No ads, no communication among subscribers, no online interaction?

>Both Knight-Ridder and the Los Angeles Times also experimented
>extensively with computer-delivered news throughout the 1980s; K-R
>lost something like 60 million dollars before shutting down its
>service.

They also convinced Dow Jones News/Retrieval to contribute information
as well.  The project might have worked except for two factors: the use of
that horrible AT&T membrane keyboard/terminal instead of personal computers,
and the verrrrrry slow graphics that took so long to paint that you thought
the monitor was shorting out.

>We still have some old hands around here (and some not so old!) who
>worked on the CompuServe project. In the next month or so, Star
>Tribune Online will move upstairs to the offices once occupied by
>what was called Tri-Star Video News.

Movin' on up, as they say!  Good luck.

Jo Ann


********************************************************
Jo Ann Mandinach, Personal Library Software,  (415) 329-8655
    Dir. of Information Industry Partnerships
          Point to http://www.pls.com to ftp our new PLWeb 2.0



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