[9377] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
New company to help magazines and newspapers go online
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Rosalind Resnick)
Sat Jan 1 16:28:18 1994
Reply-To: rosalind@harrison.win.net (Rosalind Resnick)
To: com-priv@psi.com
Date: Sat, 01 Jan 1994 15:31:19
From: rosalind@harrison.win.net (Rosalind Resnick)
NEW COMPANY TO HELP MAGAZINES AND NEWSPAPERS GO ONLINE
Headed by veteran business and technology writer Rosalind Resnick,
Interactive Communications of Hollywood, Fla., offers consulting services to
newspapers and magazines seeking to add an interactive dimension to their
print editions by going online. Our firm provides assistance in the areas of
market research, contract negotations, online editorial development, bulletin
board management, and journalistic and technical training. Our clients range
from national newspapers and magazines to regional and specialty publications.
Interactive Communications has recently provided assistance to a national
small-business magazine to help set up a bulletin board on a major online
service and to a national professional newspaper developing a stand-alone
bulletin board system for a select group of CEO's.
The following is a partial list of the services we provide:
* We produce customized market research reports complete with industry trends
and statistics, case studies of what other newspapers and magazines are doing,
and cost-benefit analyses of online options available (joint ventures with
commercial online services, stand-alone bulletin board systems, Internet
"storefronts," etc.). Through our network of industry sources, we ferret out
competitive intelligence about the terms of other online ventures and help
our clients negotiate the best deal possible. Then we help them formulate a
marketing plan to promote their bulletin boards both online and in print.
* We help select qualified bulletin board managers and show our clients'
staff how to organize online discussions and real-time conferences to
generate reader interest. As a journalist who has logged thousands of hours
interviewing online subscribers and has written extensively about online
services for Compute, PC Today and Home Office Computing magazines, Ms.
Resnick knows first-hand what brings people in and what turns them off.
* We help train our clients' staff and freelancers to go online, to send and
retrieve e-mail and files, to post messages seeking interview sources, and
to perform other online tasks that will make their work more efficient. An
experienced electronic journalist herself and the author of Exploring the
World of Online Services (Sybex, 1993), a how-to guide for small business
owners and professionals, Ms. Resnick has the technical expertise to teach
these skills quickly, effectively and accurately.
* We help our clients set up an electronic article-delivery system that will
make it easier and less expensive for freelancers to file their stories and
respond to editors' comments and questions. This can significantly reduce a
publication's long-distance phone bills.
Why should newspapers and magazines go online?
Because that's where the readers are going. Today, more than 4 million people
subscribe to the nation's five largest mass-market online services -- Prodigy,
CompuServe, GEnie, America Online and Delphi -- for everything from exchanging
electronic mail and swapping views on hobbies and interests to playing
interactive games and managing their investments and businesses. By 1997,
that subscriber base is expected to swell to 10 million. The Internet now
numbers more than 15 million users and is reported to be growing at a rate of
1 million users a month.
Following their readers' lead, dozens of newspapers and magazines are
rocketing into cyberspace, too. Cox Newspapers' Palm Beach Post and Atlanta
Journal and Constitution have signed up with Prodigy, the IBM-Sears venture,
to provide online editions of their dailies. Entrepreneur Magazine, U.S. News
& World Report and The Detroit Free Press have signed on with CompuServe.
Time, The New Republic, Compute, The San Jose Mercury News and many others
have joined forces with America Online.
These publications are embracing the new medium in an effort to attract new
readers and to offer existing subscribers the ability to tap into interactive
services such as database searching, online networking, and instant access
to editors and writers.
Experience and Expertise
Rosalind Resnick, 34, president and founder of Interactive Communications,
has spent the last 13 years as reporter, editor and freelance writer for
national and regional newspapers and magazines such as The New York Times,
The Miami Herald, Forbes, Compute and Home Office Computing. She is also the
author of Exploring the World of Online Services (Sybex, 1993) and Online
After Dark, a book about the impact of cybersex on American culture (to be
published by Random House in September 1994). She is married to Bill Grueskin,
city editor of The Miami Herald, and has two computer-literate daughters,
Julia, 4, and Caroline, 1.
Our Philosophy
Unlike the movie, "Field of Dreams," in which Kevin Costner builds a baseball
park in the middle of an Iowa cornfield and players and fans begin streaming
in out of nowhere, we believe it's not enough for a magazine or newspaper to
post a bunch of articles on a computer bulletin board and expect millions of
people to log on and read them. As major media organizations learned the hard
way in the 1980s, people don't go online to passively absorb videotext -- they
want to talk, they want to play, they want to interact. The future, as we see
it, belongs to those magazines and newspapers creative enough to use their
print editions as springboards for developing "virtual" pubs, clubs,
conference rooms and coffeehouses where readers old and new will want to
spend time hanging out. If you share our dream, we can help you make it a
reality.
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Rosalind Resnick
Interactive Communications
1124 Harrison Street
Hollywood FL 33019
Vox: 305-920-5326
E-Mail: 71333,1473 - CompuServe
RosalindR - America Online
rosalind@harrison.win.net - Internet
Fax: 305-926-7655
