Local Links, Made Easy
With set circulation routes, retail markets and coverage zones, the notion of a newspaper's "community" seems fairly straightforward. Now try extending that to cyberspace, where the shortest distance between point A and point B often involves a hyperlink halfway around the world.
So publishers turn to community systems, which are database-driven tools allowing local organizations to automatically post their own news, information or calendar listings to World Wide Web sites. For newspapers, that means more local content--often content they lack room to run in print editions, such as Little League scores, church newsletters and community-theater schedules.
"With the explosive opportunity offered by the Web to create virtually unlimited market space, newspaper publishers are positioned to serve as the glue that binds the myriad of community events together," said Frank Daniels III, NandO.net's founder and now CEO of Koz Inc. of Research Triangle Park, N.C.
Starting this fall, the Chicago Tribune will use Koz and IBM's Community Publishing System. Doing so will also "help us deliver incremental value to the traditional paper-and-ink newspaper," asserts Owen Youngman, Tribune director of interactive media. The Tacoma (Wash.) Tribune will use a similar system developed by Seattle's Pantheon Inc.
Bethlehem, Pa.-based Regional Network Communications Inc. offers similar features as part of its broader RegionOnline content package, now used by The Express-Times in Easton, Pa. Along with letting organizations post listings, RegionOnline includes supplemental entertainment information, online games and advertising. For a site focusing strictly on news, that provides "a regional wrap that protects the advertising dollar" from local competitors, argues RNC's Eric J. Ruth.
Mark Toner, Presstime staff writer. E-mail, tonem@naa.org; phone, (703) 902-1684; fax, (703) 902-1690.