Subject: Re: Online newspapers unite From: zeke@digmedia.com (Margie Wylie) Date: Fri, 5 May 1995 11:47:20 -0800

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After talking to Cox vice president Peter Winter (who is acting as the
interim chief of the New Century Network) I get the feeling that the
cooperative is less the brave move that they've made it out to be than a
desperate circling of the wagons so that the newspaper settlers have a
chance of fending off the hostile natives of cyberspace.

>From what I can tell, NCN will work something like the AP. It will have 10
employees, 5 techies, 5 non-techies that will be shared resources for every
NCN member. Members pay dues that pay for the NCN employees and services.

NCN will set the standards for newspapers to get access to each other
(i.e., the Web--to be an NCN member, your online publication must be
accessible from the Web and must be able to access the Web.) The idea is
that if I'm in my local paper's service, let's say Mercury Center, I can go
to the NCN icon and link into Access Atlanta at no extra charge. My "local"
(whatever that means in cyberspace) paper would set the charge and I would
get access to all other NCN papers free. The Cox folk say that they would
lock out competing papers in the same area from each others services so
that I couldn't access the SF Chronicle to read the SF Examiner at the same
time.

While I think it's about time that newspapers stop trying to go it alone in
online projects, this network seems to have some serious problems and
betrays a newspaper's way of thinking (not an online news service). For
example, what constitutes a "local paper" in cyberspace? I live in San
Francisco, but if I want access to both papers at once for one fee, all I
need to do is hit the web page of any other NCN network newspaper. NCN also
speaks of letting "local" newspapers set their own access fees, but on the
Web, every newspaper out there becomes "local;" and through NCN, they all
offer basically the same content. They will all be competing with each
other. As a reader, I'll just shop for the cheapest access fee. Or the
newspapers that's been successful enough with advertising to charge no
access fee at all.


Margie Wylie                                             zeke@digmedia.com
Editor                                                          415/575-3778
Digital Media                                             Info@digmedia.com
Scribe ebrius, Ede sobrius.                      http://www.digmedia.com/






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