Web Wishes
by David M. Cole
The reactions of newspapers and their traditional suppliers to the online world has been weird.
Newspapers themselves have treaded lightly. Oh, I know that most North American dailies have a Web site, but how many have something more than a mere "shovelware" site, one that is more than the shoveling of the day's print publication onto the Web? You can probably count those that have been truly innovative on your digits without taking off your shoes.
As the cover story of this issue of TechNews is about Web classifieds, let's take a look at just how newspapers and their suppliers have dealt with that topic. I think back to a conference three or four years ago. One of the newspaper industry's leading lights in the arena of print production and I were chatting (today this fellow is a leading light in the new-media realm).
"Why should we be worried about classified ads online?" he asked. "We have all the existing systems, equipment and knowledge. They don't. They could never catch up with us."
I asked him if he realized that at least one traditional supplier was preparing a classified system that could run on one workstation—the server, database and client could all be wrapped up in one box. No need for an expensive system like the one at his newspaper, just a little thing that would allow a single telephone operator to take ads—and considerably level the playing field.
"Uh, no," he said.
Of course, I missed something by not pointing out that a true Web-classified system would take ads over the Web, not over the phone.
Which, I guess, is where my first big complaint about suppliers comes in. The ability to input and rate classified ads on a Web browser is pretty simple technology—except that you pretty much can't find it in systems being sold to newspapers today.
At NEXPO® 98 last June, we saw some feeble attempts at trying to make this happen, but this is a feature that should have been available years ago on the high-end systems and should have made its way to low-end systems by now.
Newspapers do lose a certain degree of control by allowing customers to enter their own ads, specifically the control of "upselling." In the upsale, the ad order-entry personnel suggest different wordings and schedules to the customer, each of which successively creates more income for the newspaper.
But the upsale could be emulated, perhaps even improved, in an online environment. The customer's text could be interactively parsed, and more descriptive—and expensive—wording suggested.
Based on the customer's ZIP code, the system could do "what-ifs" on zoning and determine frequency using algorithms based on the existing database ("If you run this ad on Tuesday, we'll only have one other 1989 Chrysler LeBaron listed").
My second big complaint about suppliers is that they persist in selling classified systems that treat classified-ad text as free-form text. The systems that are sold today should be treating classified text as fielded text.
Within the context of current technology, that probably means some type of markup-language tagging—perhaps even SGML (Standard Generalized Markup Language). The ad order-entry person could insert tags into free-form text that would then allow those tagged words to be entered into a relational database.
That would then allow newspapers to skip the step of running text-parsers—such as products from Edgil Associates Inc. of North Chelmsford, Mass., or IsoQuest of Fairfax, Va.—against their print classifieds to format them for searching on the Web. Further, if the text were entered in a fielded state, it would be infinitely easier to manipulate, store and query in the future.
So that gives us two major features to request in classified systems for the future—Web-based input as well as fielded text.
When will such systems be available? Well, that's a good question. I know of no newspaper that has requested either of these features in recent months, and the last few months have been hectic for suppliers as newspapers seek to replace aging systems (both classified and editorial) with ones that will get over the Year 2000 hump. So we must assume that these features will be delayed until well into 2000, if not 2001, as the supplier industry is swamped and will continue to be swamped with purchasers more concerned with operating ability than new features.
And then there is another major issue that will confront newspapers: what their Web counterparts will charge for classified ads. Newspapers have traditionally charged for real estate, the actual physical space an ad occupies. But on the Web, there is no newsprint, and therefore no need to charge for space.
What will newspapers do?
Cole is a San Francisco-based newspaper consultant and editor of The Cole Papers, a monthly newsletter on technology, journalism and publishing. E-mail, dmc@colegroup.com; phone, (650) 994-2100; fax, (650) 994-2108. The opinions expressed are those of the author and not necessarily TechNews or NAA.