To: Carolyn Garrett Cline 
cc: Jeff Perlman , online-news@planetarynews.com
In-Reply-To: 
Message-ID: 
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII
Sender: owner-online-news@marketplace.com
Precedence: bulk
Status: RO
X-Status: 


	I think it equates with a different audience, Carolyn, and a
different medium -- not just popularity.  I have also written for the
editorial page of the Times, and they have written about me 25 times since
1991.  
	
	You are not looking at a newspaper at this moment, Carolyn; the
thing in front of you is a computer monitor, and its closest brother is a
television.  It is not a newspaper in another form, but a new form.  As
the sole publication on the entire long list of publications in the WIRED
Top 10 poll (why do they put that name in caps, I wonder? :) to have
originated online, and the first general interest original-content daily
ever to go online -- per Adam Gaffin, who ought to know -- the first
digital daily, in short, our audience of computer professionals (they were
here first) government emlpoyees (a lot of those were online early)
students, other newspaper reporters and editors (who are our clients for
the fresh, original articles AR Correspondents supply from around the
world) and the advertising-free environment that is consistently devoted 
to good writing and significant news.  

	The fact the general public that is online also likes us should
come as no surprise.  On the 113 Web sites served by AR in little towns
and smaller cities across 16 states, we speak simply and directly to
people's minds and hearts unhindered by the vast amount of
advertiser-related news that appears in every edition of even a fine
newspaper like the Times. 

Best,

Joe Shea
Editor-in-Chief
The American Reporter
joeshea@netcom.com
http://www.newshare.com/Reporter/today.html


On Thu, 29 Aug 1996, Carolyn Garrett Cline wrote:

> 
> 
> The recent debate over the AR rating in the Top 10 list vs the LA Times,
> seems to equate, a least in Joe's mind, popularity with quality or at
> least with being a better online service.
> 
> Since when? The latest circulation figures for Reader's Digest lists them
> at 15,150,822  versus the Scientific American's 633,693. (Ad Age, Aug.
> 26).  More people can identify Heather Locklear than the prime minister of
> Israel. How many Barbara Cartland novels are sold each year?
> 
> Polls are polls. Statistics are open to all sorts of interpretation.
> Quality is quality.  Never should they be confused.
> 
> The question is what *is* quality in this new media? Print media turn to
> the Pulitzers, broadcast to Emmy, and other awards, but do we have a way
> to judge quality beyond the number of hits or the amount of hype a site
> has done?
> 
> Yeah, I'm biased, in case you wonder. I do some writing for the Times, but
> I also teach research methods at the University of Southern California,
> where we still gaze in awe at the tobacco companies' reseach that shows
> that #1, nicotine is not addictive and #2, there's no "proof" that
> advertising leads to smoking.
> 
> Give it up, Joe.  The AR made it in a poll.  Great.
> 
> Carolyn Cline
> ccline@bcf.usc.edu
> 
> +---------------------------------------------------------------------------+
> This message was posted to ONLINE-NEWS. http://www.planetarynews.com/o-n.html
> 
+---------------------------------------------------------------------------+
This message was posted to ONLINE-NEWS. http://www.planetarynews.com/o-n.html

From owner-online-news@marketplace.com Thu Aug 29 22:30:58 1996
Received: from marketplace.com (majordom@marketplace.com [206.168.5.232]) by cnj.digex.net (8.6.12/8.6.12) with ESMTP id WAA17981 ; for ; Thu, 29 Aug 1996 22:30:57 -0400
Received: (from majordom@localhost) by marketplace.com (8.6.12/8.6.12) id RAA11844 for online-news-outgoing; Thu, 29 Aug 1996 17:35:10 -0600
Received: from server.indra.com (server.indra.com [204.144.142.2]) by marketplace.com (8.6.12/8.6.12) with ESMTP id RAA11824 for ; Thu, 29 Aug 1996 17:35:02 -0600
Received: from indra.com by server.indra.com (8.7.4/Spike-8-1.0)
	id RAA01693; Thu, 29 Aug 1996 17:24:43 -0600 (MDT)
Received: from mail.Clark.Net by indra.com (8.7.4/Spike-8-1.0)
	id RAA02042; Thu, 29 Aug 1996 17:24:42 -0600 (MDT)
Received: from explorer2.clark.net (xerxes@explorer2.clark.net [168.143.0.5]) by mail.Clark.Net (8.7.3/8.6.5) with ESMTP id RAA15618; Thu, 29 Aug 1996 17:04:21 -0400 (EDT)
Received: from localhost (xerxes@localhost) by explorer2.clark.net (8.7.1/8.7.1) with SMTP id RAA13905; Thu, 29 Aug 1996 17:04:16 -0400 (EDT)
X-Authentication-Warning: explorer2.clark.net: xerxes owned process doing -bs