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On Thu, 20 Apr 95  davem@staff.pnpa.com (Dave Morgan) Wrote:

> It seems to me that regardless of how the New Century Network plays out on 
> the ground--whether as a real business, a content provider, a national 
> online advertising house, a standards creator, or just a bunch of 
> links--that the announcement has already had the desired effect.
> 

> 
> I think that it is significant that USA Today Online's print ads make no 
> mention at all of Compuserve, and I don't believe that their web site omits 
> references to Compuserve as well.  It's now the newspaper industry's turn.
> 
Welvome to the World Wide Web--this is why I love writing about this 
industry (as Rosalind said earlier) new groups seem to take "control" 
every few weeks.  Right now we're sitting at the pre-launch of any 
number of truly new media on the Internet, none of which has any real 
precedent in the "real" world.  Since it's all speculative, any 
single slice--from the transport companies providing log-haul telecom 
to content providers to aggregators like AOL, P* and CIS--can be seen 
to be positioning to dominate, but we really don't know how any of 
this is going to play out.

I think the NCN deal derives more from this than from nefarious 
schemes to dominate the world (although they'd love that if it 
happened as a by-product).  Looking at the actual subscription 
numbers for online newspapers, I'm betting they fall somewhere around 
50K nationwide, including the Cox/P* consortium members and the 
subscription-based Internet papers (I'm not counting papers which 
allow open, random access to content).  If you're a local paper, 
getting the kind of sub numbers that could actually be a business in 
the short term means you have two choices--go national to get to 
enough online users willing to put out cash for an online pub (stupid 
because it doesn't play to a newspapers strength--local community) or 
seed the market.

The sense I get from NCN is that establishing the standards and 
providing help and a national network of news sources serves a dual 
function--it gives papers that are bewildered by the options and 
risks of going online a central resource of information and 
experience as well as a map for getting up and running.  It also 
ensures that papers are not going to attempt a national expansion 
that could squelch other local papers efforts to launch e-papers.  

This is all off the top of my head (and is written with my Skeptic 
button off) but I see this as a "good thing(tm)" in the long term 
becuase it encourages online newspapers to develop--and to 
develop on the Internet, where they should be--, is cognizant of the 
special strengths of local newspapers, gives a lot of flexibility 
for local papers to enter other business (such as access, as per Bob 
Wyman's previously outlined scenario)  and gives a way for hidebound 
ancillary but critical businesses such as advertising to make an 
online transition by delivering a larger critical mass of potential 
"eyeballs" more quickly than if each newspaper was going alone.

 The faster we can get the advertising people onto this, getting their 
hands dirty and developing a clue about the unique nature of "pull" 
versus "push" information delivery, the more quickly this becomes an 
industry and the happier we (and the banks holding our mortgages) can 
all become. 



 
Nate Zelnick                          natez@pluto.njcc.com
Information & Interactive Services Report v. 609-397-8990
Report on Electronic Commerce             f. 609-397-8993
Multimedia Daily       URL http://pluto.njcc.com/~natez/


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