Is it time to get your news from the information superhighway, or is the classic delivery system with the morning newspaper and the evening TV networks still sufficient? Before you take the plunge and cancel your subscription to the Daily Bugle and start watching something else on TV, realize that there are a number of issues to consider before getting your news on-line. Let's take a careful look around at the landscape. 1. Is on-line news a replacement for reading your local newspapers and watching CNN? Most of our correspondents feel that on-line news complements, rather than replaces, the traditional TV and newspaper sources. "On-line services give the latest news, while newspapers and magazines provide competitive information, comparative strategies, and analysis," said Anne Perlman, Vice President and general manager of multimedia for Tandem Computers, Cupertino, Calif. (408 285 4520). Tandem's 9000 employees have access to a variety of on-line news sources, and Perlman spends up to two hours per week reading on-line news and another six hours per week on newspapers and trade magazines. "The information from on-line services is almost instantaneously available after a situation has occurred. I have to wait until the next day or the next week with a newspaper or trade magazine to find out any information. Following company mergers, such as Viacom and Blockbuster, I can view changes as fast as they happen," Chris Thompson, who is director of customer support for CyberGate, Inc., Deerfield Beach, Fl. (305 428 4283), an internet access provider and consulting firm. CyberGate has over 2000 customers reading on-line news provided by ClariNet Communications Corp. (San Jose, Calif. 408 296 0366) Brad Templeton, CEO of ClariNet, agrees with this characterization of complementary technologies: "In spite of the fact that we have 80,000 readers we hardly ever hear of people cancelling their daily newspaper because of us. We provide a very different presentation and access to things that aren't found in the daily newspaper. On the other hand, you can't put your bowl of cereal on top of us." "The main advantages of on-line news are speed, certainty, and simplicity for the things you muist know about regularly. The disadvantages are that you must read other things on a background basis to become aware of changing trends," says Peter Eddison, who is vice president marketing, Fulcrum Technologies, Inc., Ottawa, Canada (613 238 1761) Fulcrum develops full-text searching software and has three executives, five of his marketing staff, and two R&D staffers that read on-line news. But getting news from on-line sources is more than just being one of the first informed about an event. There are things you can do with on-line information easily that are difficult or impossible to do with your morning newspaper: "On-line news has its advantages because you can save the information in a much more accessible and manageable form, and also forward it to colleagues in no time," says Brigitte Weeks, who is editor-in-chief, Guideposts Associates, a religious book publisher in New York NY (212 251 8131) and self-confessed "news junkie" who reads three daily papers, watches alot of CNN, and makes use of America Online's on-line news services. "Using on-line news is like listening to a party line telephone. You hear everything from the trivial to the important about your neighbors. Traditional newspapers can only focus on the important news, neglecting the rich stew of unimportant information that is often the key to understanding what is really going on," says Edward Loss, who is vice president of global marketing, Cyborg Systems, Inc., Chicago, Ill. (312 454 1865. Cyborg is a human resource management software vendor and has 12 on-line news customers, including seven executives. Loss spends an hour a week reading on-line news. Oftentimes it is this "stew" of information that can help readers of on-line news get a leg up in their business dealings, particularly once readers understand the relationship between their traditional news sources and electronic ones. All that is needed is a keen eye and attention to the ingredients. "For example, we'll receive a story about a publisher setting up a new multi-media division. I'll then contact our local sales account manager and alert him or her to what is happening. We can call on this client and possibly sell our computers. The selling cycle happens much earlier than if we had waited to read about this event in a newspaper," said Tandem's Perlman. "Recently, a competitor announced a high-level executive appointment. In itself this was not a big deal. But over the course of a short period of time, additional high-level staffing changes were announced. If traditional media had covered these announcements (they didn't), coverage would be minimal and there would be no way of connecting them. Having an on-line source such as First gather all the details into one place helped me to decipher the big meaning behind a series of small changes," says Loss. And on-line sources can be helpful when it comes time to make business-critical decisions such as mergers and acquisitions: "I was able to search through several Christian magazines that are carried on America Online as part of a competitive review for my company. It helped us find an underserved audience for the publication we were acquiring," says Weeks. 2. What kinds of content are provided on-line? Each service provides a different set of news sources and presentation, and the best way to evaluate them is to first determine your own reading patterns: are you more interested in headlines or in the details? Some services offer only headlines, while others offer more complete articles. Some send you the headlines and a one-sentence summary of the article, and then you either email, call, or fax back a request for the stories that you are interested in. Others present their entire database and provide search tools for you to zoom in on the relevant stories. "In my world, there is just too much news, too often. The capacity for scanning large amounts of information for most of us is greater in print than on the computer screen," says Guidepost's Weeks. "When travelling with a notebook computer, scanning on-line articles can be cumbersome on a small screen," said Perlman. There are two basic types of content providers: one kind comes from companies that don't have any newspaper properties and gather news from wire services and other sources, including regional newspapers and trade papers. This type provides electronic information exclusively and includes vendors such as Individual, Inc. (Cambridge, Mass. 617 354 2230) and ClariNet. Users recommend this source of on-line news for depth and coverage beyond their daily newspapers and weekly trade magazines. The other kind of provider runs as an adjunct to a press wire service or daily newspapers, and can contain either digests of the articles printed in the newspaper or augment the printed stories with non-published information. Two examples of this latter kind of provider include the San Jose Mercury News, with its Mercury Center, and the New York Times, with its @Times, both available on America OnLine along with several dozen other magazines and newspapers. This type of source makes more sense if you are a regular reader of these newspapers and want more information than what is printed each day, or if you have a favorite reporter or columnist that you want to follow. Each service uses different sources of information for their stories, and you'll want to examine the kind and quality of these sources before subscribing. This can get complicated, because some vendors have different products that cover different source collections. ClariNet has a basic product that has about 150 articles daily arranged in 80 different topic areas. This basic offering includes the Associated Press' bulletins. They have other products that include Reuters' news feeds and another that spans about 750 articles daily and covers over 250 topics including both the AP and Reuters' news wires. Individual has their own menu of products, ranging from a budget service that delivers 20 headlines daily to more full-featured offerings that deliver 14 stories a day from over 750 topics and 300 different sources. This premium product includes the business sections of over 60 daily newspapers around the country and 30 different news wires including AP and Reuters. Compuserve's Executive News Service covers 20 different wire services, Desktop Data's News Edge product carries over 250 sources for its service, Mainstream carries 18 different wire services, and DowVision covers 11 wire services plus articles from the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. The critical questions to ask are: -- how many articles are posted each day, -- how many times a day is new information added to the service, and -- how many different topic areas are available? 3. How do you find the articles that you are interested in? Each service has a slightly different method to filter or focus its entire database of articles so you don't have to manually plow through the entire set. Perhaps the most customizable is Individual's First service. First allows you to fine-tune the stories that are transmitted to your desktop via a series of keywords and feedback forms that you fill out reacting to the relevance of previously read stories. The result of this feedback is that you just see articles on the topics of interest. "In reading a newspaper, it is often hit or miss in picking up current developments. With a finely-tuned customized news profile, you can feel more confident that you are reading all you need to know. You have a better chance of seeing what you need than if you just casually scan a newspaper," says Paul Kennedy, who is senior director, marketing intelligence, Avon Products, Inc., New York, NY (212 546 6379) (the personal beauty products company). Kennedy reads two daily newspapers, and spends an hour a day on trade magazines, in addition to using on-line news from First. "First fills a void by providing regular news updates, specifically tailored to individuals or small groups on an everyday basis," he says. This filtering mechanism means that you can use on-line news as a way to obtain more depth of information on a set series of topics. "I rely completely on on-line serives to tell me about things I need to know. I rely on reading printed papers and journals to bring to my attention things which are interesting and that I should start to track more closely -- and then I add them to my on-line profile. Printed materials are much better at providing this 'serendipity' of stumbling upon things that turn out to be interesting," says Eddison. "The ability to customize First for a specific target audience is important, as different groups are interested in different subjects. Senior executives, for example, may want information on the economy or competitive performance indicators, while line managers often are more interested in news relevant to their specific area of responsibility, such as developments in the skin care treatment industry," says Avon's Kennedy. Just as important as these interest profiles are the mechanisms that each service uses to catalog information and allow you to search through it. Because ClariNet is based on Usenet newsgroups, it works with any of a variety of graphical newsreaders such as NewsWatcher or NetScape Communications' Web browser. The service collects articles into hundreds of topic groupings, with one topic per newsgroup. This means you only need to just examine a few topics that interest you and can ignore the remainder. CompuServe's Executive News Service allows you to filter articles by date, keywords, and other criteria to build your own personal profile. And there are two newspaper-like products called Journalist for Windows and Relevant for the Macintosh. Each actually assembles a "front-page" of articles on your desktop computer based on your keywords, display fonts, and layouts. In effect, you are your own managing editor, reporter, and production chief all rolled into one, which could be more effort than one wants to read on-line news. Journalist works with either Compuserve or Prodigy's news sources, whie Relevant works with DowVision. One thing lacking from most on-line news summaries are indications of reporter's bylines. "The average on-line newsfeed gives a short headline and no byline. This cannot capture any flavor of the story. I don't want to waste my time calling up stories only to find they are by someone I am not interested in reading," says Weeks. 4. How do you want news delivered to your desktop? Getting an on-line news subscription takes patience and perseverance: you need to do your research and determine the match between your company's news needs and existing subscriptions to on-line services and telecommunications infrastructure. Each news provider has relationships with usually only one electronic service. ClariNet makes extensive use of Internet connections and newsgroups; the Executive News Service is exclusive to CompuServe; America OnLine carries several electronic versions of newspapers including the New York Times and the San Jose Mercury; Prodigy offers a customized version of the Atlanta Constitution called Access Atlanta; Dow Vision works with a direct telephone connection from their network to yours; and various other newspapers and other sources are popping up almost daily on the Internet making use of World Wide Web servers. Individual, Inc. provides the widest array of delivery options. news via various e-mail connections such as Lotus' Notes and cc:Mail products, MCI Mail; Internet Web servers; and fax. Given these relationships, you'll need to investigate whether your company has the necessary communications infrastructure and on-line accounts already setup to work with the news service providers that you desire. For example, you'll need a full Internet connection or access to a third-party Internet provider that is a subscriber (such as Pipeline (New York), Netcom (San Jose), or World (Boston)) to be able to obtain ClariNet's products, with DowVision you'll need an X.25 line to their computers or an Internet connection [CHECK], to obtain CompuServe's Executive News feeds you'll need a Windows or Macintosh computer with a modem along with an account on CompuServe, and the easiest way to get Individual's news is via nothing more than a fax machine. And if you don't have any relationships or telecommunications infrastructure, you might want to look into Mainstream Data Inc., which uses satelite transmissions to beam news directly to your company via radio waves. 5. What are the typical costs? Many of the Internet-based products are free, once you pay for your connection to the Internet and can locate the Web server with your browser. The exception to this is ClariNet, which is paid for by either your corporation or by the Internet provider such as World or Pipeline. ClariNet has a complex set of pricing that depends on what kind of Internet access your company has and the type of institution: educational sites get a high discount from the corporate rates, for example. However, in general prices range from $40 per month for two users of the basic service to $300 a month for 20 users for the full service. CompuServe's Executive News Service is an extra-cost option that charges $15 an hour in addition to the standard CompuServe connect time charges. First can cost as little as $15 a month for the headline service (and an extra $5 per each full-text article selected) to $1000 a month for ten users of the full-featured service. DowVision costs $1000 a month for ten people, and other pricing plans are also available. And Desktop Data costs $4500 a month for 100 users. Obviously, getting a final cost figure is not easy, given all these variables. Nevertheless, corporate users have found that subscriptions to their on-line news vendors were relatively easy sells to management."My decision to subscribe to First was based on a Avon's operating culture and the extent to which we are interested and use outside news," says Avon's Kennedy. One suggestion is to first try one of the services as a pilot with a highly-placed executive: "We sold First as a pilot and gave anecdotal evidence of its usefulness," said Tandem's Perlman, who has a company-wide site license for all of its 9000 employees to receive news directly via email. Whatever you do, involve top-level management in your decision. "First replaced a manual, ad hoc market intelligence system. The improvement in information access sold itself to senior management," says Loss. "Our operations are worldwide, so it is vital that managing directors around the world have immediate access to US-based news and First provides a painless way to do this." And another method is to examine a scenario when your executives aren't the first to be informed about changing market and world events:"The way to justify the cost is to ask executives to consider the cost to them of not knowing about some public news that others knew about -- what is the cost of getting a phone call from a customer and not being on top of the news? Imagine when Microsoft announced that Windows 95 would be late, then one of my key resellers calls and asks me what this does to our products' scheduled release? Imagine the cost to me if I hadn't heard that news? In today's fast world, it is simply essential that executives and manages stay on top of the news -- and the only way to do that is on-line," says Fulcrum's Eddison. "If getting electronic news delivery can help your business, then we are very cost-effective. What we publish today is going to be in tomorrow morning's newspapers. We also provide more depth, particularly in international and specific industry coverage, where the traditional media simply don't have room to run the more obscure stories. Our service is entertaining as well and makes the company network a more interesting place," said ClariNet's Templeton. Products mentioned: Individual, Inc. (Cambridge, Mass. 617 354 2230) ClariNet Communications Corp. (San Jose, Calif. 408 296 0366) Prodigy Services Co. (White Plains, NY 914 448 8000 Compuserve Information Services (Columbus, OH 614 457 8600) America Online, (Vienna, VA (703) 448-8700) Dow Jones Information Services (DowVision) (Princeton, NJ 609 520 4677) Desktop Data (News Edge) (617 890 0042) Mainstream (wireless) Data Inc. (Salt Lake City, UT 801 584 2800) Ped Software Corp. (Journalist) (San Jose, 408 253 0894) Ensemble Information Systems (Relevant) (Menlo Park, CA 415 617 9730) BIO: David Strom has written extensively for Forbes and has his own consulting firm in Port Washington, NY. He can be reached via the Internet at david@strom.com
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David Strom
Port Washington, NY 11050 USA
US TEL: 1 (516) 944-3407