To: Michael Cassidy 
Cc: "S. Finer" , online-news@marketplace.com
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Mr. Cassidy, I am sympathetic with, and appreciate, your comments 
concerning the costs of feeding and keeping journalists.  In the academic 
business, where I hang my hat, we have the same problems with the feeding 
and keeping of certain "knowledge specialists", who also need to go to 
Paris and have someone to pay for their French wine while on assignment.  
I also understand that it will be difficult to pay the "overhead" for 
in-depth and "quality" reporting unless we can figure out ways to make 
all those netheads who are spoiled with a "Pleasure Island" carload of 
free information cough up more to finance our junkets abroad.  

I have a horrible thought that might make even fewer journalists and 
academics go into a profession where the perks are paltry.  But what if 
we didn't have to go to Paris to get our story.  What if we did it via 
sophisticated search mechanisms and information analysis - you know, like 
those guys in Langley do sometimes - using computers, networks of 
personal sources, etc.  We could even talk over the phone.  

What if...I am trembling...we rethought and "revinented" the journalistic 
and academic professions so that they worked better in the age of 
low-cost, cheap information.  I am trying to do that for educators with 
what is called an "extended learning" project.  We have grant financing.  
The progress is slow, but we are making headway.  The real strategic 
problem, as I see it, is that the "consumer" - in this case, the parents 
who pay tuition bills, the 40-year-old educational "retread" - doesn't 
understand French wine and Parisian hotels as a necessary and 
God-authorized cost of doing business in order to make the world 
intelligible to them.

But we will perservere...

From owner-online-news@marketplace.com Thu Apr 20 18:24:05 1995
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To: RASCHKE