From the Print Media to the Internet by Marie Lebert (mobile ebook reader .TXT) 📕

Jean-Paul, a musician and writer living in Paris, sent his comments in his e-mail of June 21, 1998:

"My future on the Web is more personal than professional. The Internet will allow me to do without any intermediaries: record companies, publishers, distributors… Above all it will allow me to formalize what I have in my head (and elsewhere), for which the print medium (micro-publishing, in fact) only allowed me to give something approximate. Then the intermediaries will take over, and I'll have to look somewhere else, a place where the grass is greener…"

4.3. Electronic Publishing

Since the seventies, the traditional publishing chain has been drastically disrupted.

The printing work traditionally done by pre-press shops was first weakened by the introduction of photocomposition machines. The text and image processing work began to be executed by advertising agencies and graphic art studies. The impression costs went on decreasing with the spread of desktop publishing, copiers, color copiers and digital printing equipment.The text and image processing work is now provided at low price by desktop publishing shops and graphic art studios.

Furthermore, digitization accelerated the preparation process of a publication, because the sub-editor, the artistic designer and the staff responsible for the make-up can now work at the same time on the same book.

During the ILO Symposium on Multimedia Convergence held in January 1997, Peter
Leisink, Associate Professor of Labour Studies at the Utrecht University,
Netherlands, explained:

"A survey of the United Kingdom book publishing industry showed that proofreaders and editors have been externalized and now work as home-based teleworkers. The vast majority of them had entered self-employment, not as a first-choice option, but as a result of industry mergers, relocations and redundancies. These people should actually be regarded as casualized workers, rather than as self-employed, since they have little autonomy and tend to depend on only one publishing house for their work."

Digitization makes possible the on-line publishing of educational and scientific publications, for which the latest information is essential. Some U.S. universities distribute specific textbooks gathering a selection of chapters selected in an extensive database and some professors' articles and commentaries. For a seminar, a very small print run can be prepared upon request with electronic scientific texts sent to a printer. Electronic publishing could also keep alive some academic publishers, and publishers issuing documents relating to very specific and specialized research, for which the printing of a document in a small number of copies has become more and more difficult for budgetary reasons.

At present, electronic publishing and "traditional" publishing - such as on-line bookstores and "traditional" bookstores, or cyberlibraries and "traditional" libraries - are complementary.

Even if electronic publishing considerably expands over the next few years, people will still find it convenient to have the paper version of a book or a magazine, perhaps until the digital books become really cheap. Nevertheless, the functions of traditional publishing will certainly have to be thoroughly redefined in relation to the development of electronic publishing and its considerable prospects, beginning with the low costs and the quick access to documents.

The Web has developed more and more interaction between the printed document and the electronic document, to such an extent that it becomes difficult to establish a frontier between the two supports, and it will probably no longer be necessary to make a distinction between them in the future. Most of the recent print media already stem from an electronic version on a word processor, a spreadsheet or a database. More and more documents are "only" electronic. Because of the development of digital libraries, there are fewer documents available in print. Those documents existing only in a print version can easily be scanned if necessary.

In his article The Future of Publishing, Kushal Dave, an avid computer and modem user and a high school freshman, stated:

"[…] the fully electronic document is coming into its own, thanks to the many benefits it provides. The cost is a magnitude lower than paper, while the speed is much higher. Michael Hart is the executive director of Project Gutenberg […]. In an electronic mail dialogue, he cited the example of Lewis Caroll's Alice in Wonderland. Not taking into account the cost of a computer (as little as $1000) since most people have them anyway, a copy of the book on floppy might cost a dollar. There is also no time spent publishing the document, once it's in e-text (electronic text) form it can be gotten almost instantly. On the other hand the cheapest possible paper copy of the book would be $5 because of the cost of printing, and printing would also delay its availability to the public. Electronic documents also have a better availability, since they can be reproduced infinitely and do not require leaving your house, thanks to low-cost modems. Furthermore, it is now possible to read Associated Press Reports as they are released, not in the next morning's paper, and you don't even have to pay the 25 cents. Cost, speed, and availability are just some of the compelling arguments for electronic publishing instead of paper.

Another advantage of electronic publishing is all the new possibilities it provides. Just about anybody can electronically publish anything. […] Karin L. Trgovac, director of communications for Project Gutenberg, sums it up by saying, 'I think electronic publishing helps to level the field in terms of who can publish. Look at the range of people who have access.'

Fortunately, the increased variety of the documents does nothing to impede searches for particular documents. Services like Gopher on the Internet can lead you in the right direction, and within a document, searching is a snap. Just type in what you want and before you could find the index in a paper document, you'll have found what you want.

Thanks to feedback and other features, electronic documents are an example of the encroachment of interactivity upon the passive activities we hold dear. […] 'Physical media just can't compete . . . [electronic text] just offers more 'bang for the buck', explains Hart.[…]

There are also many companies attempting to capitalize on the multimedia possibilities of electronic publishing. Sound and pictures are being incorporated in low-cost Internet World Wide Web 'publications', and companies like Medio and Nautilus are producing CD-ROMs that represent the new generation of periodicals - now music reviews include sound clips, movie reviews include trailers, book reviews include excerpts, and how-to articles include demonstrative videos. All this is put together with low costs, high speed, and many advantages."

Kushal answered my questions in his e-mail of September 1, 1998:

ML: "How do you see the relationship between the print media and the Internet?"

KD: "This is still being worked out, of course. So far, all I've been able to see is that electronic media undermines the print form in two ways: a) providing completely alternative presses that draw attention away from the previous strongholds and b) forcing the print publications to spend resources trying to counteract this trend. Both forms of media critique one another and proclaim their superiority. Print media operates under a self-important sense of credibility. And the electronic media operates under a belief that they are the only purveyors of unbiased truth. Thus, there are issues of niche and finance that need to be resolved. The Internet is certainly a more accessible and convenient medium, and thus it would be better in the long run if the strengths of the print media could be brought on-line without the extensive costs and copyright concerns that are concomitant. As the transition is made, the neat thing is a growing accountability for previously relatively unreproachable edifices. For example, we already see e-mail addresses after articles in publications, allowing readers to pester authors directly. Discussion forums on virtually all major electronic publications show that future is providing not just one person's opinion but interaction with those of others as well. Their primary job is the provision of background information. Also, the detailed statistics can be gleaned about interest in an advertisement or in content itself will force greater adaptability and a questioning of previous beliefs gained from focus groups. This means more finely honed content for the individual, as quantity and customizability grows."

ML: "What did the use of the Internet bring in your professional/personal life?"

KD: "The Internet has certainly been a distraction. ;) But beyond that, an immeasurable amount of both trivial and pertinent information has been gleaned in casual browsing sessions. […]"

ML: "How do you see your professional/personal future or the future in general with the Internet?"

KD: "In my personal future, I'd like to get a B.S., M.S., and M.Eng, working in the industry for a while before moving on to write about the medium for some reputable publication. The future of the Internet in general I see as becoming more popular and yet more fraught with conflict over the growth of commercialism and the perception that the Net's devolutionary spirit has been undermined. There will also be a need to deal with a glut of information - already we see Internet search engines reinventing themselves to try to provide a more optimal and efficient portal."

Concerning taxation, an outline agreement was concluded between the United States and the European Union in December 1997, and this agreement should be followed by an international convention. Internet is considered as a free trade area, that is to say without any custom duties for software, films and electronic books bought on the Internet. The material goods and other services are subject to the existing regulations, with collection of the VAT for example, without any additional custom duties.

It has not yet been statistically proved that the large-scale use of computers and electronic documents will save paper, and therefore avoid or at least reduce the cutting of trees, as hoped by all those concerned by environmental problems. We are still in a transition period in which many people still need to print to read "better", or to keep track of a document in case the electronic file is accidentally deleted, or to have a paper support for their documentation or their archives.

Apart from its easy access and its low cost, the main quality of the electronic document is that, when it is regularly updated, the Internet user can benefit from the latest version. It is not necessary to wait for a new printed edition linked to commercial constraints and requirements from the publisher.

[In this chapter:]

[5.1. On-line Press: Examples and Directories / 5.2. Future Trends for the On-line Press]

5.1. On-Line Press: Examples and Directories

Before the Web became widespread, the first electronic versions of newspapers were available through commercial services like America Online or CompuServe. Then the publishers of these newspapers created web servers. Numerous newspapers and magazines now have their sites on which they offer the full version of their latest issue - available freely or through subscription (free or paid) - and some dossiers and archives. Other on-line newspapers and magazines did not originally exist in paper version. They are "only" electronic. Everywhere in the world, the future of the on-line press is provoking an in-depth debate on the job of journalist and on copyright problems.

The New York Times' website can be accessed free of charge around the world. It includes the daily contents of The New York Times newspaper, breaking news updates every ten minutes and original reporting found only on the Web. The site of the Los Angeles Times will soon be equipped with a machine translation software provided by Alis Technologies which will translate the web pages into Spanish and French, and later into Japanese. The Washington Post gives the daily news on-line, and has a full database of articles, with images, sound and video.

In the United Kingdom, the Times and the Sunday Times have a common website, with the possibility to create a personalized edition. The Economist, a respected English economic magazine, is also available on-line, as are the French daily newspapers Le Monde and Libération, the Spanish daily newspaper El Pais or the German weekly magazines Focus or Der Spiegel, among many others.

The computer press on-line includes the monthly Wired, created in 1992 in California, a cult magazine which was the first to be dedicated to cyberculture and now wants to be the magazine of the future at the avant-garde of the 21st century. ZDNet is the site of the main publisher of computer magazines in the world.

Some magazines are "only" electronic, like the Chroniques de Cybérie. In The New
York Times of November 25, 1997, Bruno Giussani explained:

"Almost no one in the United States has ever heard of Jean-Pierre Cloutier, yet he is one