The virtual California of the Internet gold rush, e-commerce remains practically untapped. To strike with online-transaction opportunities, projected to reach $11 billion this year, prospectors require new thinking and new tools.

Business-to-business publications, for instance, have begun refocusing their World Wide Web sites as marketplaces where readers and advertisers meet to make business transactions, observed Steve Dienna, an Atlanta publishing-segment executive with IBM.

"Newspaper publishers are struggling [over] how to position themselves," he said. "Are they getting there? The mind-set is."

Getting there, Dienna argues, deals less with having the ability to make transactions and more with developing content and online communities of interest. IBM demonstrated emerging products addressing different pieces of those puzzles, including tools that help tailor content, an ongoing partnership with community-publishing developer Koz.com, and a prototype "electronic newspaper" using electronic-ink technology. Regardless of whether tomorrow's news comes via ink or bits and bytes, "the whole evolution of the newspaper industry is all about content," Dienna stressed.

Clearing content. Getting that content to the Internet is becoming far easier. "Traditional vendors are beginning to understand the multimedia environment," observed Elizabeth A. Sholar, vice president of technology and production at The Globe and Mail in Toronto.

Indeed, most have either built their own Web-publishing tools or links to third-party ones. Among NEXPO's content-management suppliers: Adhesive Software of Austin, tapped by Denver-based Quark Inc. before its system-integration business was placed on hold; FutureTense of Acton, Mass., claiming The Sun in Baltimore and The New York Times as recent converts; and Versifi.com of Newport Beach, Calif., offering a Java-based system.

All feature dynamic-content tools that marry stories to templates, and they share a common goal: to "have people not do the mundane stuff," as Sholar put it.

Cashing in. With national retailers already offering powerhouse Internet-shopping sites, many newspaper publishers are now building online storefronts for local merchants, typically through technology partnerships.

Having just signed the Los Angeles Times and won a $5 million investment from parent Times Mirror Co., Internet Tradeline of New York City remains the industry leader, claiming more than 125 newspaper affiliates. Income is generated from hosting fees and revenue-sharing. By contrast, Seattle's 6-year-old iCat Corp. exacts a flat monthly fee from retailers; it offers publishers the choice of referring merchants and sharing revenue or paying an up-front fee for private malls. InfiNet of Norfolk, Va., resells Open Market's ShopSite technology, including a low-cost, upgradable "lite" version without real-time credit-card processing.

Other content providers also add transactional capabilities. Consider NEXPO newcomer and city-site builder Ticketmaster Online-CitySearch, which placed the "Ticketmaster" portion of its name first for good reason.

PowerAdz.com of Rensselaer, N.Y., is even offering cash to newspapers adopting its Zwire! turnkey publishing solution. The company will distribute a total of $1 million in grants to help bankroll in-print promotion. Why? "Newspapers that actively promote their Web sites in print...demonstrate a commitment to the success of their online advertisers," explained Vice President Lamonte Rhoades.

Tapping archives. Many archive providers now offer tools allowing newspapers to sell access on the Web. New York-based Infonautics Corp. updated its turnkey e-commerce service, permitting publishers to offer subscriptions, discounts, promotion packages and digital-cash options along with the more common fee-per-article model. With the exception of large newspapers, the practice still remains mostly unprofitable, cautioned Tribune Solutions' Glenn Cruickshank, developer for Newsview Solutions of Horsham, Pa. Newsview uses Open Market technology to provide fee-based archive access, but none of its customers currently find such services feasible.

Changing classified ads. Online classified ads now encompass auctions, a hot Internet trend and an extension of the very concept of classified. New York-based AdOne announced a partnership with FairMarket Inc. to provide local auctions to member newspapers. Likewise, 700-affiliate PowerAdz entered an earlier partnership with Times Mirror Co.-owned Auction Universe.

More traditional services include Web perks. Several print-based advertising-system suppliers signed partnerships with USA.net to provide advertisers with temporary e-mail addresses, while both IPIX of Oak Ridge, Tenn., and Realtor 3D of South San Francisco offer 360-degree panoramic house tours.

Other tools blur the concept of a traditional classified ad, with developers offering software that lets auto dealers and employment managers call their own shots. Along with an Autochooser product that ties into dealers' inventory to automate print, online and cable advertising, Pentawave Inc. of Scottsdale, Ariz., readies an employment service intended to give newspaper publishers a broader share of the $5.1 billion online-recruiting segment by moving up and down the value chain from the want ad.

JobChooser targets passive job seekers by offering them free résumés and permanent URLs. It also helps hiring managers select from pools of candidates, first through an automated review process, then through video interviews conducted at automated kiosks. Doing so provides readers a free service and employers numerous advertising opportunities along with prospect-management tools-all under the newspaper's brand.

To be tested at a major-market metro this fall, the key to JobChooser's approach is extending the newspaper's brand-and the power of print.

Advertisers entering "a pure Web solution go in and out like a revolving door," observed Robert C. Holt III, vice president of marketing and media, noting that print-advertising buys prove far more "sticky," to borrow a popular Internet term.

Community chest. E-commerce cements relations between companies and customers, and for publishers, that often extends to the print edition.

Community-publishing providers, including Koz.com, Union-Street.com and InfiNet's YourTown.net, allow users to post content to a paper's Web site, and a few newspaper editors have begun shoveling that information into print (Presstime, July/August 1999, p. 47). For instance, Cincinnati-based Gannett Media Technologies International's Celebro city-guide software allows user-contributed calendar information to be reused in print, as does InfoTaxi from GCN Publishing of Port Washington, N.Y.

Customer service proves the keystone of on- and off-line relations, and a host of advertising-system developers now offer online ad-placement and proofing tools. On a similar note, FutureTense is working with The New York Times to develop an online application for print subscribers, providing "customer service that would otherwise require a lot of people at an 800 number," said Bill Machanic, vice president of marketing.

Even suppliers use e-commerce. Goss Graphic Systems of Westmont, Ill., for instance, placed its proprietary PartsLink ordering system on the Web.

Considering that a University of Texas study placed the value of all business conducted through the Internet at $301 billion, far overshadowing the $11 billion in transactional revenue expected this year, companies that make such proactive moves could pan out as true online gold.

Where do technically skilled new-media employees go when they leave newspapers?

They "vest in peace," quipped Chris Jennewein, vice president of technology and operations for Knight Ridder New Media in San Jose.

Such is the challenge facing newspaper managers who need Internet workers and must compete for them with start-up operations offering ownership stakes, Jennewein explained during an open lunch at NAA's Labor Relations and Technology Seminar.

Aside from changing compensation models, Jennewein said other keys to attract and retain new-media talent include flexibility and a willingness to change rapidly and take risks. Perhaps most important for managers and staff: the ability to look at new-media projects not in terms of advertising, editorial or production, but as total products.

Jennewein illustrated his discussion with examples from Knight Ridder, "an online pioneer" since the 1980s. After years of experimenting with newspaper sites, the company's dailies are adopting The Kansas City (Mo.) Star's model: a vigorous online newspaper at www.kcstar.com, and a RealCities portal at www.kansascity.com that serves the community (Presstime, March 1998, p. 43).

Both sites link to online classifieds, but kansascity.com also boasts affiliate television stations, museums, the Kansas City Royals, and other institutions and groups. In Texas, Jennewein said, the Dallas-Fort Worth Internet site will link The Dallas Morning News and Fort Worth Star-Telegram, while the print editions remain bitter rivals.

RealCities sites operate in 45 cities. In April, the network had a national reach of 4.6 percent and ranked fourth in usage behind national portal sites. Several RealCities sites have achieved profitability. Knight-Ridder has started issuing quarterly revenue reports for the overall new-media division, projected to come very close to breaking even this year, Jennewein said.

Online sites have the potential to become lucrative, yet newspaper managers must address the challenges of maintaining good content; updating it 24 hours per day; training staff to handle print, audio and video media; developing standards and formats; and creating better work-flow tools, Jennewein said.

You've finally figured out what HTML stands for. Get ready for more alphabet soup.

XML—Extensible Markup Language, HTML's stronger and smarter sibling—is poised to become a mainstream newspaper technology. All three major new editorial systems unveiled at NEXPO support XML, as do new tools from other suppliers (see story, p. S16).

By separating design from content and including metadata hooks that bolster searchability, the format helps employees publish in multiple editions and media. Chief among those media, of course, is the Internet, and systems handling World Wide Web content are moving to XML. Along with simplifying Web searching and archiving, XML helps organizations exchange information and simplifies e-commerce, proponents say.

	Intype Inc. demonstrated Handoff, which converts editorial or wire copy into News Industry Format-compliant XML

"It is a more intelligent way to store files," added Liz Jones, product manager for Seattle-based Intype Inc., whose Handoff product converts wire feeds and content from traditional editorial databases into XML. Once data are in XML format, systems such as Handoff and IPS Xcelerate by FutureTense Inc. of Acton, Mass., can build story lists and apply multiple style sheets to format online content without human intervention.

The emerging News Industry Text Format, NITF, takes XML's benefits and applies an industry-specific sheen. An incoming wire story, for instance, gains metadata tags, making fields such as the subject and author searchable, and acquires hooks to related images and cutlines (Presstime, June 1999, p. 74).

NITF was approved by NAA's Wire Service Committee at NEXPO and also won support from suppliers, including Intype and NewsView Solutions. The latter had good reason to become an early adopter: Tribune Solutions' Glenn Cruickshank, developer of the Horsham, Pa., company's archive products, helped draft the standard. "It made sense to put my money where my mouth is," he said.

Adopting NITF will standardize search terms, "a Holy Grail among librarians," Cruickshank quipped. That allows more time to "add value to the content," he added, cautioning that "the payoff is really not immediate."

Perhaps not, but other suppliers, including FutureTense, CCI Europe of Kennesaw, Ga., and Digital Technology International of Springville, Utah, plan NITF support. To that end, Intype seeks agreements with traditional suppliers.

TechNews Volume 5, Number 4: July/August 1999

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