Eclectic Edgies
The Old Gray Lady's colorful online presence and a banner-toting airplane boosting a newspaper-site URL are among the eclectic winners of NAA's New Media Federation Digital Edge Awards.
Top honors went to The New York Times among large-market sites, Times Union in Albany, N.Y., for medium markets, and Search Colorado.com, a joint effort among several newspapers, for smaller-market presences.
"The range of winners in this year's Digital Edge Awards demonstrates that the newspaper industry has...propelled itself forward with many varied approaches," said NAA New Media Federation President Lincoln Millstein, vice president and publisher of Times Company Digital.
A complete list of winners and selected comments from the panel of Edgies judges:
The New York Times, best online newspaper, circulation more than 150,000. Judges called nytimes.com "comprehensive, well-edited and easy to navigate," and cited its "strong links to the print product."
Times Union, Albany, best online newspaper, circulation 75,000-to-150,000. Judges touted timesunion.com's "focus on interactivity and community."
The Glenwood Post of Glenwood Springs, The Rifle Citizen Telegram, and The Eagle Valley Enterprise, best online newspaper, circulation less than 75,000, for SearchColorado.com, providing "one-click access to news and information from eight Western Colorado communities."
The Globe and Mail, Toronto (www. globecareers.com), best classified use of new media, circulation more than 150,000. Cited for its "wealth of decision-support tools," chat area and integrated editorial content.
The Gazette, Cedar Rapids, Iowa (www.corridorcareers.com), best classified use of new media, circulation 75,000-to-150,000. Cited for "creativity, simplicity and comprehensive usefulness."
Naples (Fla.) Daily News (www.naples news.com/classified), best classified use of new media, circulation less than 75,000. Cited for AdRover, a virtual hound that e-mails desired ads to registered users.
The New York Times, best advertising campaign. Cited for promotions for Northern Light, which brought the search product "tens of thousands of users."
Chicago Tribune, best interactive feature, awarded for coverage of the 91st annual Chicago Auto Show, including an interactive floor plan and live camera shots.
San Jose Mercury News, best news presentation. Awarded for its Microsoft antitrust trial coverage (www.siliconvalley. com), "demonstrating that newspapers can adapt presentation to the needs of a new medium... without dumbing down content."
Orlando Weekly (www.orlandoweekly.com), best feature presentation. Cited for "doing the most with the least resources," its entertainment site was until recently maintained by two full-time staffers and one part-time staffer.
The New York Times, public-service award, circulation more than 150,000. Awarded for The New York Times Learning Network (www.nytimes.com/learning), a site created for educators and students.
The Santa Rosa (Calif.) Press Democrat, public service award, circulation 75,000-to-150,000. Awarded for The Knowledge Connection (www.pressdemo.com/library/ research), devoted to students grades 3-12.
New Jersey Online, best community section (www.nj.com/njcommunities), which now features more than 3,100 not-for-profit groups, schools and sports clubs.
Chicago Tribune, best marketing of an Internet product, circulation more than 150,000. Awarded for Metromix (www.metromix.com) and its aggressive marketing program.
Cape Cod Times, Hyannis, Mass., best marketing of an Internet product, circulation less than 75,000, for Cape@ Home (www.capeathome.com).
Marketing includes trolley signs and ad banners pulled by planes over area beaches.
Your AP, Your Browser
With The Wire expected to be in use at 300 newspaper World Wide Web sites by year's end, The Associated Press gets its fair share of Internet eyeballs. Now the cooperative is building an entirely new Internet-based news service it doesn't expect anyone to see.
Anyone but the editors who already use the service, that is.
Called Your AP, the site will provide newspaper members with Internet access to all AP stories, pictures and graphics. A backup service to AP's other means of transmission, Your AP also will give editors a one-stop view of items moving across the wire, helping plan story budgets and match images with articles.
"It doesn't take place of the systems we use for delivering news to your production systems," President and Chief Executive Officer Louis D. Boccardi said when unveiling the service earlier this year. "We're using the Internet to offer another way to look at your AP news."
In addition to two weeks' worth of content, Your AP will include editor-friendly information such as upcoming story budgets and event calendars, as well as contact information for AP staffers.
The new service is part of broader changes to AP's technology, including the elimination of its venerable Leaf Desk image-handling system and the merging of its aging AP GraphicsNet service and AP AdSend into an upgraded satellite-distribution service (TechNews, May/June 1999, p. 22).
Despite all the changes—or perhaps because of them—AP anticipates no Y2K-related problems. The most recent series of tests of its DataStream text-transmission network in late June caused no problems, and an additional battery of tests, including ones of its AP AdSend service, is slated for October.
Who Is It?
There is a story, perhaps apocryphal, that part of the original justification for The Associated Press was the simple fact that there is no way to tell who is on the other end of a telegraph connection. Is it the town mayor sending that delicious little story, or is it the town drunk?
Things are, of course, much worse now. As we all know, on the Internet no one knows if you are who you say you are, or just an extremely clever household pet who found the computer running. Even worse is the question of Internet Protocol "spoofing." For obvious reasons, we will skip the "how" part of the story, but it is possible to make e-mails look like they came from someone else.
So here is the proverbial 64-dollar question: While the Internet is a convenient way to receive content, how do you ensure you're getting the bona fide goods?
When the Houston Chronicle began receiving an e-mail feed of Texas space and energy news from PRNewswire, editors became concerned about authenticity.
Houston's solution: Digital-signature technology, rooted in public-key cryptography. Public-key software such as Pretty Good Privacy uses a pair of keys—in effect, two long numbers—to transmit encrypted information. The sender has one key to encrypt data; the receiver has the other to decrypt it. At some point, people realized this system could be used to positively identify the sender of information. Spoof all the IPs you want—if you don't have the sender's key, you can't add the digital signature.
Easy, yes? And it is, it except for the part about being arrested as an arms dealer. "One of the problems with cryptography is that it is controlled by international arms treaties," says James Carpenter, system implementer. "You get into big hairy doo-doo if you try to export it." In other words, you can't simply start
exchanging cryptographic software unless you don't mind an occasional visit from the men in black. The solution, says Carpenter, is that the treaties only cover encryption software, not the development tools to build it. "Just give them the tools and tell them to do it themselves."
Here's how it works. PRNewswire adds a digital signature to a story, then e-mails it to the Chronicle. When the story arrives at the Chronicle, it hits a Netscape mail server that runs a Perl script that verifies the signature, parses the e-mail, converts it to HTML and then posts the story to the Chronicle's Vignette World Wide Web-publishing system.
Carpenter says he wrote the script in Perl because it has a MIME module that handles Internet e-mail protocols. "You can use any language, but unless it already has a MIME tools module, you're going to be in pain."
Christopher J. Feola is senior editor for information commerce and technology at Belo Interactive Media. E-mail, cfeola@belo.com; phone, (214) 977-4057.