Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, March 5, 1995 TAG: 9503040051
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: F-2 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: HOWARD KURTZ THE WASHINGTON POST
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Is this stuff any better than glossy paper?
The short answer, after a period of immersion in the world of computerized data delivery, is no. At least not yet. One can glimpse the outlines of what may be an exciting, interactive future. But at the moment, it's comparable to ordering a pizza through the Internet: It may be technologically possible, but the living-room phone is a heckuva lot easier.
``No one ever reads a second Time cover story on-line,'' says Philip Elmer-DeWitt, a Time senior editor who often writes about computers. ``Just reading one is enough to convince you it's no fun. When you go on-line, you basically throw away 400 years of typography - all the stuff we've learned since Gutenberg to make information jump off the page.''
James Fallows, the Atlantic's Washington editor and resident computer wonk, has an equally harsh verdict.
``It's a huge nuisance to read these things on-line,'' he says. ``It's a pain to read anything longer than a paragraph or two.'' Fallows sees on-line magazines as more of a promotional tool, ``a way of getting a share of people's mental space and making them more aware of what you have to offer.''
The on-line revolution, it seems, is roughly comparable to the state of television in 1951. You can watch ``I Love Lucy'' and ``Beat the Clock'' in black-and-white, but there's no pro football, let alone slow-motion instant replay. There are few live stand-ups because there is no satellite transmission. Film must be put on a plane and flown to a network bureau. CNN and ``Nightline'' are unthinkable, ``Hard Copy'' beyond comprehension.
In those pioneering days, television was basically radio with pictures. Today's on-line offerings, in most cases, are magazines with very few pictures. Most of the effort has gone into duplicating the ease of flipping through Time or Newsweek while sitting at the keyboard. But these early attempts at two-way communication, through bulletin boards and chat rooms, are bound to seem rather primitive just a few years from now.
To be sure, surfing is easy. It's fun to bounce around from the New Republic to Washingtonian to Entertainment Weekly, checking out the headlines and skimming a few stories. But to sit at your workstation and read lengthy articles for half an hour is hard work.
That's because most on-line magazines (and newspapers) are largely text-based operations. You choose among various icons, menus and headlines - but you wind up with a lot of words. Most hard-copy readers take for granted the way photos and graphics break up the monotony of gray type. Without these splashes of color, it's like reading a series of term papers that must be called up one at a time.
While new bells and whistles are inevitable - video clips, sound effects, portable units - some experts say the future lies in customized publishing. That is, you will download and print your favorite newspaper or magazine at home, but only those specialized features that really interest you. ``The front page will be defined by the reader,'' says Pascal Chesnais of the MIT Media Lab.
Does that mean zillions of dollars of computer technology will be harnessed to convert publications back to paper? ``It's a much more highly evolved medium - higher resolution, higher convenience, and it doesn't crash,'' says Stewart Brand of Global Business Network, a California consulting firm. ``I convert the stuff I really use into paper.''
Time, which is on America Online, has also joined a slew of magazines setting up shop on the much-publicized World Wide Web, a sort of hyperspace newsstand. Here's what happens when you dial the Web: Sometimes it rings and rings. Other times the line is busy. A wonderful, eight-lane superhighway glitters in the distance, but you can't get past the on-ramp. By the time you get on the Web, you could have gone down to the corner, bought a copy of Time, picked up the dry cleaning, eaten a hot dog, read the magazine and tossed it in the recycling bin.
When you reach Time's ``Pathfinder'' site, there are more traffic jams. The good news is that you can hopscotch among magazines, from Time's Japanese earthquake issue to People's ``Stud of the Year.'' The not-so-good news is exasperating delays of two minutes or more while you get such messages as ``Transferring Data'' and ``Host Contacted - Waiting for Reply.''
Delays aside, Time's ``Pathfinder'' is easy to browse, but the stories are mostly in squint-inducing small type. The message boards (``Washington,'' ``New Media,'' ``Arts and Culture'') are easier to roam than Newsweek's. The first message posted on the Time board called ``The Sexes,'' oddly enough, was from Newsweek Editor Maynard Parker. ``Anyone home?'' he asked. ``Sounds like Maynard has too much, er, time on his hands,'' one subscriber replied.
Time boasts an awesome ``O.J. Center,'' with transcripts from Court TV, maps of the Simpson estate, photos of the famed bloodstained driveway and, from People, ``short bio of Simpson girlfriend Paula Barbieri'' or ``short bio of the Chicago attorney who sat next to an agitated Simpson on the plane.'' Not everyone is hooked, though. ``O.J.!!!!!!!!! I'm sick of hearing about it!'' one cybershouter said.
Whatever the drawbacks, folks are checking it out. Subscribers are looking at Time on America Online more than 90,000 times a week, and 50,000 times at U.S. News. (Newsweek has no reliable figures at the moment.) Despite earlier fears, magazine executives say the on-line traffic is not cutting into their circulation.
There's been talk that magazines, freed from the cost of paper and ink, could supply all sorts of ``extra'' stories for specialists and aficionados.
So far, there's been little of this value-added material.
The single most useful consumer feature for these magazines is the ability to search back issues.
by CNB