In an increasingly
digital world, printed publications are developing supporting online editions.
Do you believe that both the printed and online editions will coexist in
the future. Do you think the online editions will ultimately finish off
the printed ones?
- I think that for some time both will co-exist together, for each
has its own strengths. What will happen and when it will happen depends
on the type of publication. Printed consumer encyclopedias have already
nearly been dealt a death blow by encyclopedias on CD-ROM. The reason is
that CD-ROM encyclopedias not only offer multimedia, but are vastly easier
and cheaper to produce and distribute. They offer the advantages over print
of sound, animations, movies, enhanced searchability and less space consumption.
Reproducing and distributing them costs practically nothing compared to
the costs of printing, warehousing, and shipping a large pile of books.
They can be updated every few months. Excellent CD-ROM encyclopedias can
be purchased for around $50 while the corresponding consumer editions cost
$500 or more. About the only thing that keeps a few printed encyclopedias
half alive today is libraries where the traditional love of books keeps
the libraries buying them.
I am convinced that not too long from now -- in perhaps 7 to 15 years
-- printed newspapers will go the same way. An online newspaper can do
all kind of things that a printed newspaper can't do. But it is the economics
that will make the difference. It takes tremendous capital investment and
human labor to manufacture and distribute a newspaper. Production and distribution
may represent 75 percent of the total cost and requires printing presses
costing $50 million and up, enormous manufacturing and paper storage facilities,
fleets of trucks and daily destruction of a small forest to produce a big-city
paper. It is these costs that have been killing large daily papers in the
US and most of Europe, not lack of a core of loyal readers. Readership
and percentage of the total spent on advertising for newspapers has been
going down in the US and almost all countries in Europe for many years
now. Spain is an exception, at least so far.
As advertising drains away from newspapers to the electronic medium
-- 1 to 3 percent per year, but steadily -- it becomes simply too expensive
to publish the printed paper. And the paper dies. That is what happened
to New York Newsday last year, for example, which had hundreds of
thousands of readers.
Does it not
seem to you a paradox that the ultimate man of the digital revolution,
Nick Negroponte, a confessed dyslexic, has written a best seller like Being
Digital which is a product of the Gutenberg Galaxy?
- Not really a paradox. The same was true of Marshall McLuhan some
25 years ago. I was personally acquainted with him, and he was not a particularly
impressive speaker. He wrote all kinds of books on the death of print and
became famous through the print medium. He had no hint of what the interactive
technology of Internet would be or could do, and now that technology is
what is making his concept of a media-linked "global village"
into reality. His message was of the future, and his medium was the book.
He used the book to preach the end of print.
I think it important to distinguish the book-as-content (a long essay,
divided into chapters) from the codex form of the book (printed paper pages
bound in a book). The book-as-content can be a compelling way to expose
information, specifically on a complex topic, and the novel is also a wonderful
means of entertainment. What is important about Being Digital is
its content, not the fact that it is printed on paper. At some point the
book-as-content will mainly be delivered in other media besides ink on
paper. Of course, that is already happening online and on CD-ROM. Some
forms of content that were traditionally published in print, like reference
compilations and directories of all kind, have already mostly migrated
to the electronic media.
What kind
of printed publications best lend themselves to publication on-line: newspapers,
magazines, encyclopedias? Give reasons for your response.
- All of these, but for different reasons. The advantages of newspapers
being online include ability to have constant updating during the day,
multi-media content, archive access, an interactive relationship with readers,
an ability to carry much more content, dynamic advertising and selling
linkages and dynamic linking of today's story to the archive and to other
publications. Online magazines like Time and Money in the
United States can be updated daily or hourly, besides enjoying the previous
advantages. Online encyclopedias can offer more content in more appealing
ways. And all enjoy a tremendous cost advantage when it comes to production
and distribution.
Looking a little deeper, we find that online newspapers, magazines,
and encyclopedias are becoming more like each other in some ways as they
move to take advantage of the online medium. Advanced online newspapers
cover stories in depth and provide references to past events and basic
information like biographies. Thus they are beginning to provide the reference
background that previously was only covered by encyclopedias. Online magazines
start to update their editions daily and provide daily news, and thus become
more like online newspapers. Regardless of whether an online service starts
out with roots as being the counterpart of a newspaper, magazine, TV station
or encyclopedia, succeeding in the market will require them to take advantage
of the online medium rather than staying as an "online newspaper"
or "online magazine." That will make them more alike in some
ways and will lead them to differentiate in new ways, ways that have nothing
to do with the traditional media.
Finally, on the Web we find tens of thousands of new publishers that
do not have their roots in the traditional printed media: Intel, Microsoft,
Apple, Yahoo, C/Net, Miller Brewing, Levi-Strauss, IBM -- the list could
fill the rest of this article. What about, LoveSearch.com, which contains
"a daily column featuring Resnick's well known advice on cyberlove
and relationships, weekly polls and quizzes, site reviews, chat rooms,
message boards, shopping, and what promises to be the largest personals
database on the Web." There could be no print counterpart.
What is
your impression of the development of on-line publications in Spain? Have
you any concrete experience here in Spain?
- On the whole, the movement to online publishing is proceeding very
rapidly, following the models in the United States. We have been recently
consulting with two Spanish publishers: a medium-sized daily newspaper
desiring to go online and one of the largest publishers of professional
books, and this is is keeping us in touch with the developing online marketplace.
We are also closely associated with New Media Publishing in Pamplona and
with Innovacion Periodistica, organizations that are very active in that
market. Publishers are somewhat confused about what to do, partially because
of the emergence of Infovia as an alternative or supplement to Internet.
The situation is complex, confused and moving forward very rapidly -- just
as it has been for years in the U.S. This is a problem only to those that
want to look at it as a problem. We are optimistic that Spain will be a
full player in electronic publishing.
Do
you believe there will someday be an electronic book with tactile and smell
sensations? Do you know of any concrete activities in this direction?
You
have identified a sequence of stages relating to the evolution of an online
version of a printed newspaper, from "shovelware" on forward.
The ultimate of these stages, which you call "cybermedia" defines
a complete electronic edition. What are the graphic and textual characteristics
of such an ultimate form of electronic publication? Are not visual simplicity
and obviousness contrary to profundity of analysis?
- Cybermedia, the ultimate stage of electronic online presentation,
is a state of constant change, not something that has fixed form. A couple
of months ago, it meant that your web site used "frames" and
tables and plenty of fixed graphics. Today it means using all kinds of
little Java applications that provide animation, one of the many Web audio
standards like Real Audio, extensions like Shock Wave and chat rooms where
players are represented by animated icons. In a year, there will probably
be much more use of early forms of social virtual reality where you will
be represented by an "avatar", that is, an animated cartoon representation
you use to meet with avatars of other people online. As bandwidth increases,
the richness of the scenery will increase, and video will become more and
more prevalent. Your avatars will look and move more realistically, chat
at conference tables, play games with other people's avatars, visit exotic
cyber-places with them, shop in simulated stores and even do simulated
fighting. A year later, it will be even more realistic, and there will
be newer things. Rapid innovation in online communications is likely to
continue for at least another 15 years.
There is no real conflict between visual simplicity and obviousness
on the one hand, and profundity of analysis on the other. The challenge
of design of online interfaces is to provide a simple and appealing interface
that facilitates research, retrieval and profound analysis. As time goes
on, we are learning more and more how to do this effectively.
The graphic and communications capabilities will provide ever-more
sophisticated tools for rapid analysis and understanding of situations.
A user will be able to "walk around" a scene of an explosion
or earthquake and see it from multiple viewpoints. Someone interested in
a country's economy will be able to call up all kinds of graphical representations
of data.
What are the
characteristics of on-line advertising. Is it viable? In what cases?
- A terrible lot can be said about this topic. First of all, yes.
Internet advertising works, makes money for many online Web services and
is becoming more and more popular. A few additional high points are:
- Advertising divides into two parts: the "grabber" image
designed to attract the user's attention and the advertiser's web that
the grabber leads to.
- Advertising grabbers for mass-use products will gravitate to the
most heavily used websites, regardless of whether those websites are operated
by newspaper companies or others.
- Advertiser websites will increasingly provide information, entertainment
and user value, above and beyond simply promoting products. Online users
will want objective information about what is sold.
- Online advertising will be linked more and more closely with the
selling process.
- More and more items will be directly sold online, and online advertisements
will link prospective buyers directly with sellers.
- Effectiveness of advertising will be more and more closely monitored
by computers. For example, more and more advertisers now want to pay for
the number of times a user "clicks through" from an advertising
grabber to the advertiser's web.
- Similarly, there will be more and more effort to gather data on
users and their wants and needs, and to target advertising.
Can
you offer a profile of the journalist of the future? The editor of the
future? Will people remain involved in the publishing process as publishers
become re-engineered? Can small publishing companies compete with large
ones when it comes to publishing?
- The first is a difficult and almost unanswerable question. This
is because "journalist" is a concept that made sense in the context
of the mass-media communications systems and technologies of print, radio
and, to some extent, TV. Before these media existed, there were no journalists,
and as the new online media emerges, the role of a journalist is likely
to evolve considerably or be replaced by other roles.
To see what I mean, imagine that this interview was held in the year
1590, when printing presses were beginning to be used, and the question
put to me was, "What will be the role of the scribe (the monks who
copy manuscripts in monasteries) in the future?" I would have to answer,
"There will be other roles, like writers and copy editors, but "scribes"
as we know them will have little importance." There were scribes for
perhaps 1200 years and journalists for a few hundred. Now there will be
new roles which are not named yet.
Journalism used to be something practiced by the media -- in organizations
like newspapers and TV networks. Today, the media includes every organization
which has a web with news on it. All kinds of commercial businesses, universities,
government agencies and other institutions have or are starting websites
that offer news -- in some cases, a lot of news. So, who are journalists
now? Lawyers, stockbrokers or engineers who update a Web page? Only people
who are official graduates of journalism schools? Do General Motors, Intel,
Sony, beer companies and dog food companies have journalists? Are journalists
those people who still work for the traditional media like newspapers?
What about high school kids who decide to start their own online magazines?
The fact is, the line between journalists and people who write for the
media simply does not exist anymore. Cyberspace has wiped the line away.
Even more change is in store for the editor. The editor in a newspaper
was traditionally a part of an assembly line process of publishing. Reporters
wrote stories, an editor would edit or rewrite it, the feature or section
editors would edit or rewrite it again, chief editors would review it and
possibly change it again and typographers would finally cut the story down
to make it fit on available space on a newspaper page. That has all been
changing with desktop publishing and is changing even more online where
the journalist and the editor are often the same person. Information technology
is making the traditional assembly line obsolete, whether it is in an automobile
factory or in a publication's newsroom.
My good friends in journalism schools are likely to respond, "Journalists
are people who digest, analyze and edit news and then publish it in concise
and useful form. Online services need them just as much as newspapers do."
Taking this narrower definition, I see these changes coming:
- The traditional assembly line of the newspaper is replaced with
a single writer/editor doing everything: gathering new information, researching
a subject, writing an article, selecting photographs, formatting it for
online (with the aid of powerful software) and debating with users who
argue with him by electronic mail.
- The writer/editor is familiar with a whole range of new computer
tools and techniques: how to research a subject on the Internet, how to
find and edit photographs, how to make web pages, how to use new web approaches
and software.
- The new writer/editor is also a discussion moderator, willing to
engage in online give and take with others who have something to say about
the subject.
As to the survivability of small publishing companies in the face
of larger ones, the answer is, of course, yes. One thing computers and
Internet do is reduce the production and distribution cost to almost zero
for the classical forms of publication -- print and graphics. So little
firms, even individuals, can compete effectively with the very large producers.
But, when it comes to video, it still takes a lot of money to produce materials
with the production values we have grown used to. That is why BIG still
counts in the worlds of TV and movies. Perhaps that will change with the
recent advent of desktop video, and with a growing acceptance of unprofessional
video that offers spontaneity and a sense of actual presence.
From
the point of view of publishers, what will occur with copyright as networks
develop? Are you familiar with the case of the Church of Scientology and
the online publications of its secret books? What do you think about that?
- What will happen with copyright is quite uncertain right now, and
will probably remain so for a long time. On the one hand, the whole publishing
industry is rising up to try to create new and stronger forms of copyright
legislation that protects software and Web publications and makes it a
crime to copy beyond strict limits. Laws are being proposed which would
make the a large portion of the contents of the World Wide Web illegal.
On the other hand, the whole concept of copyright may be flawed because
it is based on the technology of hot type and the printing press. One copyrights
form of contents, not the contents themselves. The concept is to prohibit
making of identical or near-identical copies while not getting in the way
of communicating the same idea in different forms. Now, it is easier and
easier to make copies which are not identical. It is ever-easier to copy
materials, and ever-harder to discover who is violating copyright in subtle
ways.
I am only generally familiar with the battles between the Scientology
people and their critics who have put their "secret" documents
on the Web. The actual battle is between the Scientologists who charge
tens of thousands of dollars for access to their training which includes
access to the "secret documents," and the critics who want to
establish that the contents of the documents is "rubbish." My
impression is that this is a holy war. Copyright protection is only an
incidental issue in this fight, a weapon that was used by the Church of
Scientology to close down the Web sites of their opponents.
The final court decisions on this Scientology battle are not yet
made. There will probably be a continuing chain of such copyright battles
during the years to come. Remember, in the dark ages, the manuscripts in
the monasteries were only for the eyes of the sophisticated religious elite,
not the general public. The printing press put an end to that exclusivity,
and today the Internet may put an end to the exclusivity and secrecy of
many religious and other documents.
From your point
of view in the Electronic Publishing Group, you have a general view of
electronic publications, both in the U.S. and internationally. What differences
appear to exist in the market requirements in North America and in Europe?
- The most profound things about publishing on Internet is that distance
is no longer a cost barrier, nor is time to distribute a publication. Once
something is on the Web, it is accessible everywhere in the world where
there is decent Internet access. Right away. Publishing on the Web is automatically
international. And it is automatically near-instantaneous. This overcoming
of the barriers of space and time is something absolutely new and radical
in publishing. So anybody anywhere can publish for any market, there or
anywhere else. Servers for hundreds of Latin American Web sites are in
places like Miami, Boston, New York and Los Angeles. Each market for information,
of course, has its own peculiarities. But now, a Web publishing company
in Rome can aim at the fashion marketplace in Los Angeles and New York.
A Hong Kong publisher can aim at the New York toy market. A Madrid website
can be aimed at the people in Hollywood.
The differences that still exist are the old ones of culture and
language and the fact that Internet access is more tightly government-controlled
in Europe than in North America, and more expensive. But these control
and cost barriers are rapidly melting away. And, as they melt, what is
discovered is that time and distance no longer stand in the way for electronic
publishers.
Are the familiar
models for electronic publications and journalism applicable in Latin America?
- I think so. Basically, yes. However these models for electronic
publishing continue to be in rapid transition. The electronic newspapers
of today are different from how they were a year ago and will be different
a year from now. Unlike for newspaper publishing, there are no standard
models yet for successful online services on the Internet.
How
will the domination of the English language be resolved in the future with
respect to other languages on electronic networks? What will be the future
of Spanish in particular, given the great demographic growth of Spanish-speaking
populations? Will it be possible to take advantage of a real-time language
translation application?
- First of all, the domination of English on the Web is temporary
-- except insofar as English is already, de-facto, the World's international
language. It is cheap and easy for the people in any nation to put lots
of local materials online in the local language. The Web is very different
from video or films that way. Finland is too small a market for a thriving
local film industry but not too small for a large number of Web sites.
So, the Web will see more and more materials in many languages. There is
no worry about the survival of Spanish in cyberspace. Already, there are
over 1,000 Spanish-language Web sites, with over 100 Spanish-language newspapers
online. And the number is growing daily.
Finland and New Zealand are way ahead of the U.S. in per capita use
of Internet. And most all the materials and communications are within the
those individual countries. This is not a technology where the United States
culture will dominate.
And, yes. More and more Spanish is spoken in the U.S. Whenever I
go to Miami, I make it a point to speak to people in the streets and in
the stores using only my bad Spanish. I rarely have a problem or need to
use English. It is almost the same on the streets of New York. I expect
it will be that way in the virtual reality alleys of Internet in the future.
There are several sources of software today that will allow a Web
user to translate materials between Spanish and English as well as between
other language pairs. We have recently researched this topic for a client.
The translations are awkward but usually good enough for the users to get
a general understanding of what is being said. This kind of software is
being improved and soon will allow people to exchange e-mail with others
in the world, no matter what languages they speak.
What is your
opinion about the process of concentration going on among media companies
and the assimilation of content industries into grand media empires, such
as the case of Time Warner and MSNBC?
- I think most of the recent set of mergers of media companies, such
as the ones involving Time Warner, Turner Broadcasting and MSNBC or Disney
and ABC, make little sense at all, except from a purely financial viewpoint.
There is some synergy in these mergers, but it is little and far between.
Most of the businesses being merged have very different markets, different
creative requirements, different production requirements and different
characteristics. What has a publisher of school books for children in common
with a studio that produces sophisticated adult dramas? What is the synergy
between a publisher of statistical databases and a producer of soap operas?
From a money viewpoint, the story is different when it comes to investment
in infrastructure. For example, the cable companies need capital to invest
in new interactive services, and the phone companies have a lot of cash.
Thus, it makes sense for US West to buy Continental Cable. The merger mania
among richer companies goes beyond the world of media. In 1995, there were
almost 9,000 mergers and acquisitions in the U.S. worth about $460 billion.
The film and video related industries are big money ones, compared
to the "small is beautiful" sites of the Internet. This is because
of the high cost of video production. It is mostly in those big money,
video related industries, the mass media, where the buyers for content
companies are. Mergers have been happening because large amounts of cash
were available to make them, not necessarily because the merged companies
make sense together.
The media megadeals of the past two years involved immense payments
and the assumption of mountains of debt. Time Warner offered $7.5 billion
for Turner, Disney paid $19 billion for ABC, and Viacom bought Paramount
Communications Inc. for $9.9 billion. Seagram paid $5.7 billion for 80
percent of MCA Inc. Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. purchased New World Communications
(producer of TV shows and owner of TV stations) for $2.5 billion. After
the mergers, the stock prices of each of the acquiring companies went down
significantly. And, most of these stocks have stayed down. The big entertainment
media companies have been unable to integrate their huge acquisitions in
any meaningful way so as to generate fatter margins. This has left many
investors disillusioned. They do not buy the synergy argument and question
the wisdom of the mergers.
So the mergers result in large holding companies that can only exercise
financial management because the people at the top cannot understand the
requirements of all the individual businesses. Such conglomerate holding
companies have been with us for a long time. General Electric, for example,
makes nuclear reactors, refrigerators and washing machines, is in the defense
business and is involved in banking and insurance. Its media holdings --
RCA and NBC -- have been a small part of the whole. In some cases, being
part of a large conglomerate can work against a media company in a fast
moving market. Holding company management tends to look mostly at numbers
and to have an industrial era orientation that is deadly to companies striving
to conquer cyberspace. RCA was once the world's leader in television set
and consumer electronics technology and manufacturing, and now all of this
is abandoned to Japanese and Asian countries. Why?
As for grand schemes of powerful companies, I do not worry too much.
Look at the grand empires of the recent past. Fifteen years ago, we worried
about IBM controlling all aspects of the computer industry. Only a few
years ago, we worried that the powerful monopoly of AT & T was going
to control everything having to do with communications in the U.S. Recently,
both of these highly diversified corporations have been spinning off their
key pieces into independent companies. IBM is still reeling from the blows
of Microsoft, and AT & T seems to be falling into pieces right before
our eyes. I expect the mega-media empires to fall to pieces in a similar
fashion.
In Europe,
there is a lot of consciousness with respect to preserving cultural identity.
Do you not think that developments such as the that involving Time Warner
and MSNBC are dangerous from the viewpoint of cultural diversity?
- The new media mergers are more of the same as far as the mass-media
worlds of cable, TV and film are concerned, and therefore dangerous in
that they mean more U.S. Hollywood and made-for-TV media flooding the world.
These mergers would be dangerous in the world of Internet if they were
the only projects around dominating everything. But there will be thousands
of alternatives too. We are used to thinking about newspapers and broadcasting,
where immense investment is required, where large businesses have a great
advantage and where economy-of-scale can drive out small competitors. In
the world of Internet publications, the investments are relatively small,
large businesses are too slow because of their bureaucracies, and there
is diseconomy of scale. Why did Europe Online collapse? Why did AT &
T's online thrust, Interchange, collapse? Why is Bill Gates closing down
the Microsoft Network? Why is Prodigy collapsing despite the billion dollars
poured into it by Sears and IBM? Why are little upstarts like PCNetwork
and C-Net so important in the world of Internet? Because intelligence and
initiative mean a lot more than big corporate backing with a ton of money.
Should
Europe be fearful of the Americanization of its culture?
- Of course it should. Europe should have been fearful of that starting
after World War II, and the process of Americanization has already gone
a long way. The main tools of mass cultural imperialism have been TV and
films, which tend to present a very distorted view of who we are in the
U.S. and how we actually live. These visual media are very expensive to
produce, and we can make so many films and TV programs in the U.S. because
the market of English speaking people is so large. Europe and the rest
of the world have been flooded with these materials for over 50 years now,
and the flood gets bigger every year.
Europe's growing cable and satellite TV systems have many channels
to fill with content, and it would simply cost too much to produce the
required material in Danish in Denmark, in Swedish in Sweden, in Italian
in Italy, etc. Getting that content mainly means getting U.S. materials,
perhaps dubbing in the local language on the sound track. Right after English,
though, comes Spanish, where the world market is big enough to justify
an international market for video materials, such as soap operas made in
Venezuela.
GLOSAS NEWS was orinally posted to the WWW at URL: http://library.fortlewis.edu/~instruct/glosas/cont.htm
by Tina Evans Greenwood, Library Instruction Coordinator, Fort
Lewis College, Durango, Colorado 81301, e-mail: greenwood_t@fortlewis.edu,
and last updated May 7, 1999. By her permission the whole Website
has been archived here at the University of Tennessee server directory of GLOSAS
Chair Dr. Takeshi Utsumi from July 10, 2000 by Steve
McCarty in Japan.