| The World Wide Web allows anyone to be their own publisher. No longer do you have to have a printing press in order to be able to tell the world what you want to say. But the Web also allows newspapers and magazines, the people who already have the printing presses, the oppportunity to use a new medium to transmit the news. There are literally thousands of newspapers on the Web, and they use a number of different models to get their news content to you, the reader. | |
| Putting a newspaper online
isn't always an easy thing to do. The Web creates a number of advantages--such
as a virtually unlimited amount of space or the ability to use sound and
video to help tell a story--but it also has a number of drawbacks--it's
not portable like a newspaper is and it's easy to confuse your readers
or lose them to another site.
Many of these issues surrounding the move from print to digital formats are briefly covered in Are Online Newspapers the Wave of the Future? |
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| Who reads
news online anyway?
In the earliest days of online newspapers, many experts thought people would never go online to read a paper. A June, 1998 study from the Pew Center suggests that might not be true. |
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| "Portal
sites": news and more
One of the more recent developments in
online news delivery is the concept of so-called "portal sites." The idea
is to attract users to one site and provide them with all the information
they need within that one location. The content from the newspaper plays
a key role, but there are often added features such as job-hunting databases,
regional or community information, or contests or online-only features.
www.boston.com (The Boston Globe) Access Atlanta (Atlanta Constitution-Journal |
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| Subscription
sites: Can online papers make money?
Right now, there are lots of newspapers that are losing money maintaining their Web sites. Lots of it. All of them hope to be able to make a profit someday, either through sales of advertising space on their sites or by charging online subscription fees. So far neither model has been very successful, although there are at least two major sites that charge for access. Wall Street Journal makes a profit Slate doesn't make a profit Will the New York Times eventually charge for access? |
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| Available
only online
In addition to all the existing newspapers
that have gone online, the Web has seen the birth of many strictly digital
publications as well. Many of these publications are able to avoid the
high overhead costs faced by many of their printed competitors, but then
again they face the challenge of having enough content and resources to
be able to compete with the newspaper sites. Many of the more succesful
digital-only sites are ones that have been able to fill a special "niche"
that somehow makes them unique.
In addition to these digital-only publications, the Web allows traditional newspapers to create special content or packaages that are available only online. The Web allows them to combine sound, video and a much greater variety and number of pictures and graphics that allow readers to experience a news story in a whole new way. Blackhawk Down is an award-winning example from the Philadelphia Online site. |
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| Local
and International
By putting a newpaper online it's possible for anyone in the world to access it. This allows people who are far away geographically to follow events in a far off place, or it allows people another way to see what's going on in their own town or campus. It's possible to find news from just about anywhere, including: Federated States of Micronesia Search for your own paper in Yahoo: |
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