[1609] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Newspapers into the electronic information age
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Sean Donelan)
Tue Dec 3 15:22:18 1991
Date: Tue, 3 Dec 1991 14:19:56 CST
From: SEAN@SDG.DRA.COM (Sean Donelan)
To: com-priv@psi.com
X-Vmsmail-To: SMTP%"com-priv@psi.com"
Dave Hughes <daveh@csn.org> said:
>His major point is that there was nothing stopping the major newspapers
>from getting into the Electronic Information age, and they have
>failed to do so. Now they want to stop anyone else who does.
I don't know if this is a reaction to the activity by the Baby Bell ruling
but the St. Louis Post-Dispatch (owned by the Pulitzer Publishing Company)
recently announced "PostLink." This goes on the air in January 1992. This
is an on-line computer news service. In addition to the newspaper type stuff
(features, stock quotes, and classified ads), they will also services similar
to CompuServe and Prodigy such as the typical encyclopedia, airline
reservations type things.
In addition they are teaming up with the city public library for searching
their catalog and requesting books for home delivery.
Flat fee of $9.95 a month (I assume airline tickets are extra). The article
mentioned that the software is based on a system used in Fort-Worth by the
Texas Star-Telegram (and claimed it was very successful, any comments from
Texas?).
A quote from the article, Edwards is the vice president of News Information,
Inc. and treasurer of the Pulitzer Co.
"Edwards says theat the Pulitzer Publishing Company has been investigating the
field of videotext since 1980. And now, with the improvements in videotext
technology and the increasing readiness of the general public to accept the
videotext concept, the time is right for the launch of PostLink."
No affiliation with the Post, in fact I don't even get home delivery.
--
Sean Donelan, Data Research Associates, Inc, St. Louis, MO
Domain: sean@sdg.dra.com, Voice: (Work) +1 314-432-1100
