Going digital

Brandweek, May 8, 2000 by Paul Colford

With an eye on the future, newspapers are turning to new technologies to deliver information and generate ad dollars

GAZE INTO THE DIGITAL FUTURE OF NEWSPAPERS. IT'S easy, for the future is taking shape already, as more and more papers have advanced beyond conventional Internet sites to start distributing their content on Web-enabled phones, pagers, via e-mail, Palm Pilots and kindred devices such as the Handspring Visor, as well as in audible editions that go along on the morning commute to work. The wireless field has become so hot in recent months, with the introduction of ever more services and gadgets, including Microsoft's new Pocket PC, that the Newspaper Association of America is pressing its members to address the challenges and opportunities that come with the proliferation of gizmos offering instant access to news and information.

To cite one striking number, Palm Inc., which shipped three million Palm Pilots in 1999, recently had first-quarter sales that more than doubled its rate in the same period last year. Even as more and more people follow the early adopters in taking up new devices such as the Palm Pilot, futuristic permutations of the newspaper as we know it today are being tested and developed, hastening the day when electronic editions on portable readers will be as familiar as the papers now delivered to front porches and newsstands.

"It's all moving very quickly, and we're paddling quickly just to catch up with what's happening," says Melinda Gipson, the NAA's director of new media business development.

"If we're going to coordinate our efforts, we have to be in a position to spoon-feed the carriers that want wireless accounts, giving them local scores and events, calendar material, updates on local companies. We're working as hard as we can to convince publishers that they need to think about this, given the ubiquity of the devices and the competition in the digital space, and given the opportunities that present themselves when more and more people have one of these things in their pocket."

AvantGo Inc., one of the better-known middlemen distributing stock quotes, flight schedules and all kinds of Internet content to cellular phones and so-called personal digital assistants such as the Palm, counts among its early newspaper partners The New York Times, USA Today, The Wall Street Journal, The Financial Times and The Knoxville (Tenn.) News-Sentinel, which also supplies the GoVols.com channel for those fanatical supporters of the Tennessee Volunteers.

Stories from The New York Times and USA Today also are flying through the air to all SkyTel word-messaging subscribers who look to their pagers while on the go.

Meanwhile, those who should be looking only at the road in front of them have been able to listen to certain newspapers as they drive or shave. The Journal and then The New York Times were the first papers, more than a year ago, to partner with Audible Inc. At rates that start at $6.95 a month, the company makes available daily audio digests of the papers; stories through its Audible.com Web site, from which files also can be downloaded on such carry-along players as the Diamond Rio 500.

San Jose Mercury News, valued for its inside coverage of Silicon Alley, has since become available through Audible, which also plans its first foray into more locally focused audio when it makes available a Southern California edition of the Los Angeles Times (along with an edition of the paper focusing on the entertainment industry and a third on national and international news) by the end of this year.

"We chose these first four papers to give our customers a breadth of coverage," says Brian Fielding, Audible's vice president for business and legal affairs, saying that the company anticipates adding one or two others to serve the global audience of the Internet. "The edition for the Los Angeles local market is an experiment, quite frankly, like everything else in this [audio] space. He said that Audible Inc., based in Wayne, N.J., has nearly 18,000 customers who have paid for content in the past three months.

But the tech-savvy Mercury News and powerhouses such as The New York Times aren't the only papers equipped and sought-after to go audio. More will follow.

In the sleepier environs of Schuykill County, Pa., the 30,000-circulation Pottsville Republican & Evening Herald records audio files of its local obituaries and high school baseball scores and offers them for playback through the paper's Pottsville.com Web site. This audio dimension was added last year by the jointly owned New Horizons Team, whose voice-to-Web technology also is being used by dozens of other small and medium-sized papers intent on enriching their online presentations.

KnightRidder.com, a separate business unit that the nation's second-largest newspaper chain created last fall to operate and develop its interactive assets, is a good example of how a giant of print is preparing for the digital future of the industry by placing bets on all emerging media platforms. In 1998, Real Cities, KnightRidder.com's network of regional hubs covering the chain's own markets and others, is linked to the network by partner company Macromedia, parent company of The Record, entered into a joint arrangement with AvantGo to put regional news, sports and movie schedules on the service. "We're now getting 7 million page views a month on handheld channels," says Lem Lloyd, KnighRidder.com's director of strategic alliances. "The big winner is movie show times."