Newspapers... (re)born on the Web

The New York Times has redefined its "look" more quickly online than in print, going from a horizontal-format home page in 1995 to a larger display today. You have to register to read full stories, but so far there's no charge unless you want to dip into the archives.

The Times didn't even have color pictures in its print editions when it took to the Web with a dramatic visual approach to a June 1996 special feature intended to focus discussion of a major news story: Bosnia: uncertain paths to peace. The story includes an index that shows just how many pieces make up the project.
Also look at how The Times used the Java programming language to illustrate the computer's power at simulation, telling a story about AIDS at the same time that it explored New Media Tools for Online Journalism.
Here's a more recent example of the Times online work, an index to its past year's coverage of the Y2K problem, which includes this overview story. You also might want to look at the paper's coverage of technology and education, its collection of reference links on the same subject, and its Navigator page of links "used by the newsroom of the New York Times."

The Washington Post has been through several versions of its online presence. Online designer Mindy McAdams was there in the beginning, when it was called Digital Ink.

The Washingtonpost.com user's guide points out that the print and online organizations have separate newsrooms, and that online reporters go out and cover stories in addition to putting the day's print edition online. Here's an example of its coverage of the Year 2000 election. Notice the cross-linkage between the Post and its sister publication, Newsweek. (See the discussion of media ownership and convergence elsewhere in this Web.) For some samples of brief reviews of Web sites, see the archives of the Post's regular technology page feature, WWW.Worth It.

The NandO Times was started by the News and Observer ("The N&O") in Raleigh, N.C., as a text-only local dial-in computer bulletin board, then a regional Internet Service Provider and one of the first updated-all-day news sites on the Web.

Nando now has a global news focus as a intermediary publisher of wire service stories and photos. (To get an idea of how much material Nando can put online, see its Princess Diana coverage, including a section on the media backlash.) Nando provides one-stop browsing for stories from AP, Reuters, Agence France Press, Scripps-Howard and several other services. Today, both the N&O and Nando are owned by the McClatchy Newspapers chain, which dumped Nando's Internet Service Provider business and renamed what was left Nando Media. The Nando-processed stories are available on various McClatchy newspapers' Web sites under the heading "24 hour news." Meanwhile back at the newspaper office, a separate staff at The News and Observer Online provides news from North Carolina, public service features, searchable classifieds, and more.

The Chicago Tribune owns television and radio stations and was among the first newspapers to put a Web staff to work blending content from all three sources. (So far a free service, but started talking about registration in 1999.)

They also create original Web specials online, as well as augmenting work by the newspaper staff. No wonder a recent in-depth magazine article about the Tribune was titled Synergy City. The Tribune online also has a sense of history; see how it used the Web to cover a story close to home: the death of its famous columnist, Mike Royko. Actually, in the days immediately after his death, the Tribune also had video and audio clips of Royko interviews too, but now it seems only the text is online--terrific text, though, since it includes plenty of Royko himself. After all, he'd been a computer fan for a long time!)

Mercury Center at the San Jose Mercury News, Silicon Valley's hometown paper.

For a sample of its online work, see this feature on a hometown hero, Doug Englebart. If you're reading this online, his inventions have changed your life, whether you've ever heard of him or not.

Here are a few more online papers (I'd be happy to highlight particular stories; send me your nominations):

• The Hartford Courant, "the nation's oldest newspaper of continuous publication."
• StarText at The Fort Worth Star Telegram predated the Internet, but is now on the Web.
• The Boston Globe at Boston.com.
• The Los Angeles Times
• The New York Daily News
• USA Today
• The Christian Science Monitor
• The Wall Street Journal ($59 a year, but there's a free trial) and its Technology column
• Star Tribune, Minneapolis, Minn.
• The Philadelphia Inquirer and Daily News are both at Phillynews.com
• The Chronicle of Higher Education, the weekly guide to issues (and jobs) in academia... not to be confused with my old friends at The Chronicle, of Willimantic, Conn., a modest local paper with a modest Web presence.
• The San Francisco Chronicle at "sfgate.com."
• The San Francisco Examiner
• The Irish Times in Dublin.
• The Times, and other papers in London
• See Newslink at American Journalism Review for lists of thousands of other online papers.