This is from the online-news list. Substitute "museum" for "newspaper"
and some interesting questions arise about the museum's relationship
with its public.
 
Robbin Murphy
[log in to unmask]
 
==================FORWARDED TEXT================================
Just to set the context of what I'm about to say here, Interchange will be
a nationwide service and online publishing platform, and I work on Interchange.
That said, let me go into why a nationwide service might be useful to local
information providers such as newspapers.
It's all part of the package.
Print versions of newspapers are extrememly handy because everything comes in
one package. You can take the whole thing to the bathroom and while away the
hours in useful contemplation of the state of things.
But is that  newspaper package all the information about those topics all there
is? Nope. But you can't get to any of the other information, because it's not
part of the package. Even on Sundays in New York. Do people want to get to
other information. You betcha. What do they do? Subscribe to magazines,
watch TV, listen to the radio. What's those things got to do with the newspaper?
Not a thing. And that's the problem.
If a newspaper sets up a perfectly adequate online service - a local bulletin bo
   ard,
it has succeeded in creating an online product. Sure. But is an isolated online
product enough? Nope. Not when you can put your newspaper online with, adjacent
to, and maybe connected to gobs of the rest of the information that your users
want to access. Right now a local paper has only its own resources and the
resources of newswires and syndicates to create a product. But there's a whole
universe of information items out there that can be wrapped into an online
product if the newspaper can get to them.
A newspaper is only a package of information. You can make a small package, or
you can make a big package.
 
Donovan White [log in to unmask] in Cambridge, MA
where I speak only for myself, my ravings have nothing to do with any
company or organization.
 
Gotta run, but consider also the cost of developing an online platform that
will present non-text infomration adequately, that will support advertising.
Does a newspaper want to open those cans of worms, or devote its resources
to managing an editorial product?