To: "Eric K. Meyer" 
cc: online-news@planetarynews.com
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On Thu, 29 Aug 1996, Eric K. Meyer wrote:

> At the risk of interrupting a bashorama to stimulate discussion 
> of issues instead of platitudes, I offer for comment this 
> list of the 10 greatest myths surrounding online publishing today.
> 
> #2 The prime audience is an untapped generation of non-readers.
> 
>    In fact, the dominant audience is composed of voracious readers
>    who seek out the net as a source of augmentation for other 
>    material already available to them in traditional form. Indeed 
>    there are many who surf to find glitz and jazz, but these people 
>    rarely return and very seldom are they the audience advertisers 
>    seek. They'll try anything, but when it comes to closing a sale, 
>    the completion rate they generate is so low as to make them 
>    worthless readers, consuming more bandwidth than the revenue to 
>    be made off of them can justify.

	AR has cultivated an audience of readers, so much so that we
had to start a Book Review and run it as a regular feature for more than
8 months now.  
> 
> #3 Online readers demand rich audio-visual presentation.
> 
>    In fact, they demand efficient presentation. Decorative sensory 
>    material may appeal -- ONCE -- to a surfer, but the bread and 
>    butter of any site is its return visitors, and they are drawn 
>    by efficiency. This doesn't mean abandonment of all sensory 
>    material, but it does mean stressing the informational content 
>    of such material and making certain that it is an efficient use
>    of bandwidth. Have you noticed how the big advertisers and big
>    sites, which have been at this long enough to conduct their own 
>    research, are now talking more and more about limiting their 
>    graphics, not expanding them?
> 

	AR has never provided any graphics, and that has always meant that
our page loads in a flash despite its substantial size (241K today).

> #4 Ads work best at the top of a page.
> 
>    In fact, that may be their worst position. Ads work well when 
>    you catch a reader right after he or she finishes looking at 
>    something or right before he or she decides what to look at. 
>    Typically, readers go to a page for some reason. Putting an 
>    ad at the top means you've positioned the ad in the worst 
>    position -- inbetween the reader and what he or she is looking 
>    to find.

	AR doesn't have any ads; readers get news immediately upon 
arriving at the page.
> 
> #7 The more hits the better.
> 
>    Only if you're selling bandwidth. Quality of impression is 
>    far more significant to advertisers, as it leads to sales 
>    completions. Moreover, is this not something that journalists 
>    care about, too? We want our message to get out to the people 
>    who need to hear it. Can we really be that proud of getting 
>    a gazillion people to look at something stupid when our basic
>    news message does not get out? The advertiser doesn't want a 
>    gazillion useless hits anymore than we do -- unless, of course, 
>    all we want to do is bring about size. (Sound familiar, women?)

	AR readers stay with our page a long time once they start reading.
That is a strong attraction to bring them back -- the formation of a habit
of reading at length. We don't offer their eyes to advertisers, though. 

> 
> #8 Readers want interaction with information providers.
> 
>    Not really. What they really want is to be able to consume 
>    the information interactively. That's a key difference. Sure, 
>    a handful want to spout off, writing an electronic letter to 
>    the editor. But all forms of reader feedback have been 
>    of steadily decreasing popularity for more than 90 years. It's 
>    not the talkback that's important. It's the ability to gain 
>    some control over how the information is received.

	AR has just one or two links.  We print letters, but we don't
encourage slam-bam-thank-ya-maam visits.  AR readers get a product via
email or via the Web that is totally theirs to control, and they use it
with rather great effect.

> 
> #9 Community builds loyalty.
> 
>    Rather, the reverse is true. Again, advertisers have come to 
>    understand that content -- not dissonance reduction -- 
>    is the key to online success. Yet editorially we are mired in 
>    creating little boxes on the cyber-hillside into which we can all 
>    gather and engage in ticky-tacky conversation. (Apologies to 
>    Mellencamp.) 

	AR content is the sole reason readers come to it.  There is no
other attraction here -- no IRC chats, no links to a zillion other pages, 
nothing but news and features.

> 
> #10 Web publishing demands greater technical skills.
> 
>    In fact, the skills may be less technical that those needed to 
>    publish traditional. And certainly the theoretical mindset is 
>    less complicated. Online is a medium of total individual 
>    expression. It should be a medium of de-specialized skills, of 
>    integrating simple forms of presentation across many specialties
>    rather than mastering any one marginalized specialty. The 
>    problem is, we have become so rooted in the tools we use that 
>    we have forgotten why we use them.
> 

	In fact, it has been far easier to put AR out than to put out
any kind of publication involving type and a printing press -- incon-
ceivably easier and far, far cheaper.


> OK. If you can't find something better to talk about after all of 
> those grapefruit-size pitches, offered without the corroborative 
> evidence that could be used in rebuttal, maybe all you do want to 
> talk about is ticky-tacky. 
>    

	Now let's get back to the bashorama...

Best,

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








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