Newsprint to Net

All round the world, more and more newspapers are finding that a Net presence can be a useful sideline to their printed format. Although the first newspapers to go online were in the US, the UK's Electronic Telegraph (the online version of the Daily Telegraph) was an early starter, having been online now [September 1995] for almost a year. The list of Net-aware newspapers now includes publications from all round the world, including Mexico, Poland, Russia and South Africa.

Newspapers' online services typically procide some or all of the content of the current issue, although sometimes a time delay is introduced to reduce the impact on the circulation of the printed version. Some sites also provide archives of articles from previous issues; depending on the paper concerned, these may cover any period of time from the past week to the total life of the electronic edition, and beyond. Generally the articles provided are text-only, without accompanying pictures, which makes them quicker to download.

But it's not just daily papers which are rushing onto the Net. Magazines are appearing, too; one might expect Wired magazine to have an online existence, but Playboy might be less easy to predict (not surprisingly, it's one of the more popular sites ...). Within the UK, Private Eye also has its own site, with articles and cartoons as featured in the current issue, as well as subscription forms and sound excerpts from flexidiscs which came with previous issues. Future Publishing have a Web site dedicated to their magazines, including at least one page for each magazine they publish - although .net magazine does appear to have a rather more elaborate set of pages than, for example, Cross Stitcher.

There are also news services online which do not have a printed counterpart. Quite apart from the recent proliferation of Web-based newsletters and magazines, Canada-based ClariNet has been providing a subscription-based news service via Usenet news for several years, giving access to articles from newsfeeds such as Reuters and Associated Press.

We can expect to see more newspapers and magazines presenting themselves to the online world shortly, although it seems likely that many of the newcomers will want to register users and/or collect a subscription fee.

Electronic Telegraph: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/

Wired: http://www.hotwired.com/

Playboy: http://www.playboy.com/

Private Eye: http://www.intervid.co.uk/eye/

Future Publishing: http://www.futurenet.co.uk/