Since the days of Gutenberg, newspaper publishers have been accustomed to owning their presses. But in the rush for a place in the emerging new-media world, some have hitched their online wagons to such established venues as the major commercial services or the World Wide Web.
To some modern-day Gutenbergs who have launched their own online services, that approach is about as desirable as handing their stories to the cross-town rival.
"That's like hauling your presses off to the dump and hiring your competition to print your paper," says David E. Carlson, who helped The Albuquerque Tribune launch its Electronic Trib service in 1990 and now directs the new-media lab at the University of Florida's College of Journalism and Communications. "The only thing newspapers have that's of value to anyone else is their data and their identity. Why give it to someone else?"
For nearly 15 years, newspapers have experimented with their own online services, typically "bulletin-board systems," or BBSes. Even the earliest ones offered much of today's new-media fare: articles posted online, interactive forums and additional information not found in the printed edition. The difference between them and services tied to outside distributors is they are kept totally in-house. Along with providing content, newspapers with BBSes also have to maintain the hardware, phone connections, billing and marketing.
Many first-generation bulletin boards failed during the 1980s, but the industry began to embrace the systems again early this decade. Today, more than 30 dailies of all sizes operate BBSes of some sort. By comparison, about three dozen dailies have, or are developing, sites on commercial services such as America Online, Prodigy and CompuServe, and at least 17 others operate Web pages (Presstime Planner, Jan. 1995).
But the tide may be turning. In recent months, two large metro dailies--The Seattle Times and The Kansas City (Mo.) Star--drafted plans to enter the new-media world not through the Web or a commercial service, but with bulletin boards.
For many papers, BBSes--which can be started with a PC, off-the-shelf software and a batch of modems--have been an ideal launching point into the online world, providing learning experience and a platform for later forays onto the World Wide Web, the Internet or other services.
"The [BBS] business is a rapidly changing business, but it is showing signs of maturity,'' says James Calloway, new-media manager of NandO.net, an online service with separate BBS and World Wide Web components launched more than a year ago by The News & Observer in Raleigh, N.C. (Presstime, Nov. 1994, p. 24).
Newspapers' bulletin boards range from modest back-shop operations run by a single writer or editor in his or her spare time to ambitious, costly efforts involving flashy graphics, outside links to the Internet and dozens of dedicated staffers. The hardware requirements alone mean that setting up a BBS can cost more in capital and labor than operating a Web page in connection with an Internet-access provider, although new-media managers say newspapers can start a functional system for as little as $20,000. Backers contend that's money well spent if future newspapers are to be information providers, not just "news" providers.
"The only way to protect ourselves from more of an invasion by electronic services is to start those services ourselves," says Florida's Carlson. "[Bulletin boards are] a way to get our feet wet at a low cost. Yet they also allow us to protect our franchise as the number-one local information provider."
In a new-media world already fragmented by competing online services, local access providers and the Internet's global reach, staking an electronic claim with a BBS is still far from a sure bet. "Realistically," Carlson observes, "it's too soon to tell what the correct way to go is ultimately going to be."
HOW TO CHOOSE?
In 1982, when the Fort Worth Star-Telegram launched its StarText system, the oldest newspaper BBS still in operation, competing online services were no problem. Nor was the Internet, which would remain in the realm of academia for nearly a decade to come.
Commercial services and Internet-access providers now proliferate virtually everywhere. In Raleigh, a city of about 295,000, NandO.net's BBS competes with five other Internet-access providers, the national online services and other local bulletin boards.
"You should be doing it now because someone else is already doing it in your market, no matter how small," advises Jim Dible, director of the Pottsville (Pa.) Republican's New Horizons Group, which plans to market bulletin-board systems to other small- to mid-size papers much as it already sells audiotex services.
Choosing how to establish a new-media presence--whether among bulletin boards, the Web or commercial services--is complicated by the fact that each option requires a different business model:
That's why the New York Times Regional Newspaper Group approached the University of Florida's interactive-media lab to help develop a prototype new-media product for small- to mid-size dailies. The result is SUN.One, a bulletin-board system designed for The Gainesville (Fla.) Sun (Presstime, Nov. 1994, p. 48). Launched last March, the system logged some 18,000 phone calls in its first three weeks.
The Seattle Times Extra, a BBS launched that same month, was that paper's way of venturing into new media while staying close to home. "We wanted to fulfill the local need first and then move to other platforms in the future," says Peggy Rinne, vice president and general manager of Times Information Services Inc. "Some newspapers have made it their strategy to go up to the Web first, and they found they missed the local market."
Starting its own new-media operations on a BBS was not The News & Observer's first choice. But between the limitations of commercial online services and the complexity of going straight to the Internet, it made the most sense at the time, says Calloway.
"Our strategy has always been toward the Internet," he says. "When we first started talking to the online services about two years ago, they were either clueless about the Internet or feigning cluelessness. We selected the BBS because at the time...it was more user-friendly."
The major online services weren't even interested in the Pottsville Republican's 28,359-circulation market; the closest local-access number for each one was a long-distance phone call away. So when the daily launched its BBS, RICnet, last February, the Republican became its market's only local provider--for now.
Most bulletin-board systems, however, already face stiff competition. Unlike their text-driven predecessors, though, modern BBS software offers options similar to their competitors, such as flashy graphics, real-time stock quotes, online games and live-chat rooms, notes Melinda Gipson, NAA's new-media analyst.
Many newspaper bulletin boards also compete head-on by offering subscribers Internet access--in high demand among technophiles but still hard to find in many markets. Papers with bulletin boards also see the need to cover other new-media bases. Along with its BBS, NandO.net operates a rapidly growing collection of offerings on the Web, supported largely by advertising. And The Spokesman-Review in Spokane recently decided to complement its BBS with a sister service on Prodigy.
"We feel it's nice to be on both sides of that relationship. You can't own either side," says Calloway. "The irony is that our competition still brings eyes to our Web pages, so we are able to catch both ends of it."
WHERE'S THE MONEY?
Though providing Internet access is the hottest way for bulletin boards to generate extra revenue, few think that cash cow will last.
"In the short term, Internet access has a high potential for a revenue source. We're taking advantage of that," says Calloway. "We don't know how long it will last."
As a result, many papers see selling Internet access as a short-term cash infusion until they can develop a method of online advertising that works. "It seems it should be possible, but no one has managed yet," says Carlson of SUN.One, which is experimenting with "intrusive" electronic ads displayed at the bottom of the user's computer screen. So far, three major advertisers have signed up, he says.
Finding online advertising has been "difficult," agrees Paul Harral of Fort Worth, StarText's news director, but "it has to work" if online services are to be viable.
The Seattle Times Extra is considering taking a common approach to attracting BBS subscribers--a free trial period--and applying it to advertisers to "help them learn," Rinne says. Others, including Pottsville's RICnet, are experimenting with online malls, where the BBS links advertisers directly with consumers (see story, May 1995, p. 25).
Phoenix Newspapers Inc., publisher of The Arizona Republic and The Phoenix Gazette, took a different approach by devoting its entire BBS to a crucial advertising niche. Its Home Buying Choices system, a joint venture between the dailies and the local Realtors association, contains nothing but online listings of houses for sale.
For advertising of this sort, says Special Projects Manager David Gianelli, "the idea is to get as wide an audience as possible locally [and] keep it free so anyone with a modem and a computer can call up and look at this. That...serves the advertiser."
Then there's the bottom-line question: Do any of these bulletin-board systems make money? Not many--at least not yet--most say, but they can cover their own costs. StarText has been profitable for most of its 13-year history, and The Electronic Trib, which was started in 1990 using a rented computer for $5,000, now pays its own bills (Presstime, April 1991, p. 24).
Profit "is questionable in the near future," StarText's Harral says. He questions, however, whether the industry can afford not to explore this new technology.
THE INTERACTIVE EDGE
What BBSes lack in revenue at this point, they make up in interactivity--something missing from those failed videotex systems introduced at the same time as the first bulletin boards.
Over time, for instance, StarText "developed into an electronic community," Harral says. "We've had marriages over StarText, even babies born to people who met over the system." Even the Phoenix papers' advertising conduit, Home Buyers Choices, is inundated with requests for discussion boards and similar features. "We didn't envision that," says Gianelli. "That interest is out there."
But it takes work to make a BBS grow from "a few notes on a virtual corkboard to a community growing at its own pace," as one user described Pottsville's RICnet. The Fort Worth paper's StarText "publishes" dozens of user- written online columns and even throws parties for them.
Surveys suggest that interactivity, online services' largest drawing card, can also pay off for bulletin boards. By providing free service to schools and promoting such features as live chats and online games, NandO.net's BBS has broadened its user base: About half of its subscribers are women, in sharp contrast to the predominantly male world of the Internet. "We've really pushed the interactive part of the board," Calloway says. "That tends to appeal to more women, so that helps balance it out."
Interactivity can also give newsrooms new ways to get in touch with their readers. "The most popular conferences we had were with newspaper people," says Carlson about Albuquerque's Electronic Trib. "People literally jammed the phone lines with questions about the way the newspaper does the things it does. It made me think how badly clogged our feedback channels often are."
That feedback works both ways. Users often send reams of unsolicited information--everything from news tips to club events and Little League scores. And in an era when anyone with a PC can set up a competing online service, it's important for papers to keep the demand for such local information in mind, Gipson notes.
"Readers can provide things in the community that are important to them," she says. And if the newspaper's bulletin-board service doesn't respond to these needs, she says, "the suburban housewife with the PC will."
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