Mostaffa is the general manager of Kantoriberita Nasional Indonesia, a domestic news cooperative in Jakarta with several hundred subscribers. KNI can deliver the news by teletype, fax or even by courier. The fastest and cheapest way is via a computer connection, and for months Mostaffa has been trying to persuade his clients to adopt this method. But it's been a tough sell. Only three subscribers have signed up so far.
Mostaffa sees it as a "psychological problem" rather than a technological one.
"The clients don't appreciate the immediate speed and savings that could be made by this new technology," he says. "They still prefer the teletype system."
It's particularly ironic because many of those clients already use computers to produce their newspapers. "They are using their computers as typewriters, and that's it," Mostaffa says.
"One editor told me, 'I know you are fast, but actually we don't need it that fast.' Can you imagine a journalist saying 'We don't need it that fast'?"
Despite the resistance to change, Mostaffa isn't about to abandon the fight. He believes the tide will turn when a new generation of media managers replaces the old one. "We have to wait," he says.
Mostaffa's experience illustrates the complex factors behind technological change in the news industry. The technology itself is one consideration - but there are financial and cultural considerations as well.
In terms of technology, the Asia-Pacific region is perhaps the most diverse region of the world. Telephone density offers one yardstick of that diversity, as shown in Appendix 1. On one end of the scale, Hong Kong has 486 telephone lines for every 1,000 people; on the other, India has 7.7. (13)
This is just one hint of the more basic disparities within Asia, separating relatively affluent urban professionals from relatively poor rural farmers and tradespeople. While English may be the lingua franca of global business and the global network, most Asians are fluent in their indigenous language only. There are incompatibilities at every level of regional commerce, starting with alphabets and running through standards for telecommunications and the regulatory environment.
For all these reasons, it is dangerous to make sweeping statements about Asia's information technology. The spectrum of communications and culture is too wide: To cite just two examples, Singapore Press Holdings is involved in teletext and audiotex services as advanced as any in the world, while Depthnews, a Manila-based development news service, distributes its packet by mail because its subscribers generally cannot afford fax service.
It may be difficult for journalists to take an interest in advanced computer networks when, in their home provinces, basic telephone service is spotty at best. But even in this case, national and international trends promise rapid development.
For decades, the telegraph and telex have served as primary forms of communication in Asia. One cannot ignore the impact of telex, which is still the most ubiquitous and reliable medium in some parts of the Asia-Pacific. Again, news technology should reflect the level of technology in the society as a whole. As long as telex is the common way for regional businesses and organizations to communicate with each other, regional news organizations should keep their telex accounts as well.
However, as countries upgrade their telecommunications infrastructures, telex generally becomes less of a factor. When one can reliably communicate globally via telephone, fax and data, telex is generally phased out.
Today fax holds the status that telex once did in the communications world. It's a particularly important technology for Asia because any type of information can be transmitted, regardless of whether it is in English, Thai, Japanese or Mandarin. Even charts, graphics and photos can be sent, although those images may not be of publication quality.
A news outlet's fax machine generally serves as an "in-box" for news releases or correspondence from throughout the city or the world. Fax correspondence is "asynchronous," thus facilitating international communications across many time zones: As long as the fax machine is left on, information can be received even when the office is closed.
Throughout Asia, news agencies can distribute their dispatches via fax broadcast. The capability to send faxes of one document to many locations at once also can open the way for fax publications: These generally take the form of bulletins sent to subscribers in business offices, convention centers and hotels.
There are drawbacks to fax communications, starting with the expense of buying and maintaining the fax machines themselves. The telephone system also has to be capable of transmitting relatively error-free fax data. And when considering faxes sent outside the local calling area, there are long-distance phone charges to think about. At some newspapers in Asia, journalists can receive faxes but can't afford to fax a reply.
There are also valid concerns about the potentially depersonalizing effect of office telephones and faxes. Some journalists may be tempted to spend all their time in the office, developing stories through phone calls rather than personal contacts. Communications via telephone, fax or e-mail can only supplement and never replace walking the streets and visiting sources. This is particularly important in Asia's cultural milieu, where face-to-face contact is highly valued.
The telephone, fax and computer need not bind journalists to their offices; rather, they can have a liberating effect. Cellular telephones enable a journalist to call in a story from the scene. Pagers provide another way for the home office to stay in touch with journalists in the field.
If the newsroom operation is computerized, journalists can send in their stories from notebook computers without having to come back to the office. In urban areas, journalists can use laptops as well as cellular communications to create a mobile office, unfettered by power cords or phone lines.
In Hong Kong, journalists on the streets have come up with a novel way to cut through traffic tie-ups and the awkwardness of Chinese-language keyboards: They write their stories by hand and send them to the home office via portable fax machines for inputting there.
Looking into the future, current trends hint at a rise in new types of wireless communications, greatly reducing or eliminating the need to lay cable in even the most remote areas of Asia.
Even today, satellite-based telecommunications are available via such means as Inmarsat (International Maritime Satellite). Inmarsat service requires a ground- or sea-based transmitting station that can send voice, fax or data transmissions to the orbiting satellite above. One recently introduced type of transmitting station is the size of a briefcase and costs about $13,000. (14)
For most journalists, the cost of such service makes sense only when instant communications is required from extremely remote areas, battlefields or the scene of a disaster such as the recent earthquake in Japan.
The next generation of satellite telecommunications will be aimed at making instant communications more affordable and available.
Several schemes - including the $3.4 billion Iridium project, backed in part by DDI Corp. and other Japanese companies - call for the use of low-earth-orbit satellites to blanket the globe with coverage for digital telephone/data transmission. Although many aspects of satellite telecommunications are yet unclear, theoretically it will be as easy to make a phone call from the top of Mount Everest as from the streets of Singapore. Iridium plans to begin offering service within three years. (15)
When global computerization is added to telecommunications, the result is a communications revolution that promises to change virtually every aspect of the journalistic trade. By the turn of the century, the next generation of satellite services is likely to do for telecommunications what Star TV and its cousins have done for television in Asia.
Just as there are disparities in telecommunications development within Asia, there are also wide differences in the sophistication of computer links connecting Asian countries with the rest of the world. As shown in Appendix 2, Japan has a highly developed infrastructure of computer connections, while parts of Asia and the Pacific are not yet directly connected to the global network.
These connectivity statistics don't tell the whole story, however. Regular telephone networks and public data networks can make computerized data available even in countries that don't have a computer hard-wired to the global network. In Cambodia, for example, several nongovernmental organizations link up with the global network through Hong Kong. In China, computer users can connect with CompuServe and other commercial services abroad through the country's public data network. Even in North Korea, officials can receive daily bulletins on Northeast Asian security issues from the Nautilus Institute in California via intermediate data links.
The basic requirements for any sort of computer connectivity are straightforward: a computer, communications software, a telephone line and a modem (which translates computer data patterns into tones to be transmitted over the phone line). These basics allow one computer to be connected with another, which in turn can be linked with others in the same town or around the world.
The actual connection to the outside world can take many forms.
Of course, most newspapers are already connected in some way to the outside world. It may be a wireless link, as simple as reprinting items receiving from a shortwave radio service. Many newspapers receive articles via teletype or photos via a teleprinter. It's not such a long leap from these types of connections to methods using computers to receive wire dispatches - or even photos.
Digital image processing, in fact, is fast becoming the standard for news photography. The first step in the process generally involves computerizing the photo editing system: Images are scanned in from film negatives, then edited and separated on a computer system. The same system can be used to receive and process wire photos electronically. The next step involves using digital cameras to record news images. No paper or chemicals are needed; instead, photographic images are transferred electronically right into the photo editing system. Photos can be sent from faraway sites and prepared for publication within minutes.
The first digital cameras were relatively bulky and expensive, costing tens of thousands of dollars. But they are coming into wider use as they become more affordable and easier to use.
With computerization, it becomes easier to send news and images from afar. Some services provide global dial-up computer access to text, photos and graphics. One such example is NewsCom, which is based in Florida but has access points throughout Asia. Among the material available via NewsCom are Agence France Presse's Asian wire service and photos, articles from the South China Morning Post, and news and features from the Pacific Rim News Service. (16)
The Pacific Rim News Service, based in Seattle, uses NewsCom as a communications link with its own network of correspondents. Writers can dial into a local telephone number - in Manila, for example - and transmit their stories via modem back to the Seattle newsroom. In the same way, edited stories can be sent out to subscribers around Asia via a dial-up link to a local number.
How is this possible? NewsCom and the Pacific Rim News Service are only two of the thousands of media organizations taking advantage of specialized communication channels. These channels exist side by side with normal telephone service, but are designed to make data communications more efficient, reliable and affordable.
At the most basic level, it generally involves a packet-switched public data network, often known by the technical term X.25. Each computerized message is broken down into "packets" of data, sent with many other packets along a high-speed communications line, then reassembled and delivered to the proper computer. This makes for much more efficient use of telecommunications resources.
In the example cited above, NewsCom pays two service providers - Tymnet and Scitor - for the use of data-quality telecommunication links to Manila and many other cities around the world. Data transmissions flow from these many access points to NewsCom's headquarters in Florida and a backup computer in California. NewsCom uses the same routes to send information around the world. It recoups its transmission costs by charging subscribers for hookup, as well as for per-minute charges and a fee per kilobyte of transferred data.
There are many X.25 service providers around the world: SprintNet is one of the largest, with more than 400 local access points in 50 countries. The world's X.25 networks are interconnected, enabling a user of SprintNet, for example, to access a database host computer connected to a national X.25 network in Asia.
Such public data networks serve an important function throughout Asia, since they allow users to connect with remote computers without having to make an international phone call. For some Asia-Pacific countries, X.25 networks provide an affordable gateway to network services abroad even when such services are practically unavailable within the country. (17)
Although prices can vary widely, the pricing model is fairly standard: A commercial service (for example, NewsCom, CompuServe or UUNet, a U.S.-based network service provider) pays for the international data link and makes up for the expense through service charges to subscribers. Journalists and media organizations need only make a telephone call to the nearest access point - or arrange for a higher-level dedicated link if they wish.
X.25 service is only one of many options for international connectivity. In some areas, users might have to depend on a dial-up connection through the regular telephone network, capable of transmitting as little as 300 bits per second or as many as 28,800 bits per second, depending on the quality of the connection.
An increasing number of telecommunications providers are offering what is known as ISDN service (Integrated Service Data Network), an alternate way of transmitting signals over digital phone lines. ISDN can carry voice and data simultaneously on separate channels, at a speed of 64,000 bits per second per channel. Some countries, such as Japan, have made ISDN service available for years - but until recently the technology was derided as an "Innovation Subscribers Don't Need." Only now that computer users have discovered the true need for speed in data communications has ISDN come into its own. (18)
Other data channels can move data at speeds faster than 1 million bits per second: These include frame-relay networks (a more sophisticated cousin of the X.25 packet-switching network) or dedicated point-to-point data lines, generally leased from a telecommunications provider. These are the channels most widely used to knit together the Internet and other types of interconnected computer networks.
Still other methods of transferring data don't depend on physical connections at all, but rather on radio transmissions. Packet-radio systems can trade electronic mail via shortwave, VHF or UHF broadcasts, or via satellite links. The technology can be adapted for applications ranging from daily frontier contacts to real-time, high-speed satellite links. In 1991, just to cite one example, a portable packet-radio system was used to send global electronic mail from the scene of the Mount Pinatubo volcanic eruption in the Philippines. (19)
The next generation of fiber-optic systems and satellite links promises even greater quality at even faster speeds. Such rapid transfer rates open the way for live videoconferencing from multiple sites, the ability to select and view custom video, and the effortless transfer of news and information around the world via the global computer network. This is what many have referred to as the "information superhighway."
This sort of superhighway is still only in the conceptual stage. Today's global network is more like a web of two-lane highways, dirt roads and jungle trails. Nevertheless, journalists can follow these paths to find information and contacts around the world.
The most basic computer network - many times simpler than NewsCom or CompuServe - is the bulletin board system, through which individual computer users can be linked via dial-up modem connections with a central computer. This central computer need not be an expensive mainframe: It could be a common desktop machine with several modem ports, running a software package costing less than $100. Subscribers to the bulletin board system, or BBS, can download software, exchange messages or post their own observations on a variety of topics for everyone to see.
Bulletin board systems can be interconnected through a system known as Fidonet. In the Fidonet system, one system operator places a phone call to another system according to a predetermined schedule in order to transfer outgoing files and receive incoming files. Pieces of electronic mail are passed along the Fidonet grapevine until they reach their intended destinations.
Fidonet is generally used by hobbyists and individual system operators. Larger institutions often use another, more sophisticated method of exchanging information: Unix-to-Unix Copy Protocol, better known by the acronym UUCP. UUCP, which transfers information via data links, is Asia's most widespread means of connecting computers to the global network.
UUCP allows a network of computers using the Unix operating system to exchange electronic mail and bulletin board postings. Like Fidonet, UUCP host computers are not continuously connected to the rest of the global network. Rather, there is a periodic exchange of data, analogous to a daily mail delivery.
"Store-and-forward" methods of information exchange such as Fidonet and UUCP are well-suited to areas with less developed telecommunications systems. They make e-mail and electronic bulletin boards accessible even in Katmandu or Papeete. But only a limited number of services are available through such networks, since there is not a real-time, permanent connection between one host computer and another.
Such connections do exist within Bitnet and its European counterpart, EARN. These are networks of computers at various institutions, primarily universities. In most cases, Bitnet sites also have direct access to the Internet, although the electronic "address" may be slightly different. In other cases, access must be gained through "gateway" computers at particular institutions.
There are also many commercial computer systems that make their services available to anyone who wishes to pay the usage fees. This category includes the traditional database services such as Nexis/Lexis, Dialog, NewsNet and FT Profile - all of which maintain online archives of major Asian newspapers and wire services. Other companies - such as Delphi, Dow Jones News/Retrieval and CompuServe - provide their subscribers not only with access to proprietary databases but also with communications services such as e-mail.
In terms of subscribers, the world's largest commercial network is most likely CompuServe, which has scores of access points in Asia. CompuServe offers a wealth of news to its 2.7 million subscribers worldwide from information providers such as The Associated Press, the Australian Associated Press, Xinhua, Itar-Tass and many other news providers. Subscribers also have limited access to Internet resources through CompuServe's gateway.
In Japan, Nifty-Serve provides similar services to more than 750,000 subscribers through a licensing agreement with CompuServe. Nifty-Serve is Japan's second-largest commercial network, ranking behind NEC PC VAN.
Asahi Net, another commercial online service that was created by the Asahi Shimbun in 1988, has about 260,000 subscribers and provides access to a wide variety of "newsbases," including of course the Asahi Shimbun itself.
In addition to the commercial online systems, there are also hundreds of thousands of local-area networks at corporations around the world linked into the global network - though for security reasons the link may be limited to e-mail access only.
The "mother of all networks" is the Internet, providing interconnections for all the networks listed above. As of October 1994, the Internet connected 3.8 million computers worldwide, and the quarterly growth rate is in double digits. (20) It is impossible to determine the precise number of people who can contact each other through those computers, but it is easily in the tens of millions.
In most cases, an individual user dials into a computer directly connected to the Internet, maintained by an access provider. But for an additional charge, some access providers offer customers more direct connections to the Internet known as SLIP (Serial Line Internet Protocol) or PPP (Point-to-Point Protocol). SLIP/PPP service usually costs more, but it lets the subscriber use sophisticated programs such as Mosaic or Netscape to retrieve graphics, photos, audio and even video over the Internet. Some programs, such as Slipknot and The Internet Adapter, offer many of the features of a SLIP connection without actually using such a connection.
Fidonet, UUCP, Bitnet, commercial online services and the Internet all have different technical features, but in everyday use, the distinctions between communication channels and types of networks tend to blur together.
It is possible, for example, to send data through a normal telephone line to a router in Vladivostok, and from there via an X.25 public data network to Moscow, a satellite link to San Francisco, an underwater cable to Japan, and finally via a high-speed ISDN phone line or even a wireless telephone link to a computer (or, for that matter, a fax machine) in Tokyo. A Nifty-Serve subscriber can send a message to a Bitnet computer that automatically forwards that message to a UUCP or Fidonet address via Internet connections.
For this reason, it is more useful to think of all these networks as a global web tied together by electronic mail. E-mail is the lowest common denominator of the global network - with other services available according to the capability and cost of each particular computer network.
Appendix 3 provides a country-by-country list of network access providers.
Pricing schemes for network services vary widely. Sometimes a flat monthly fee is charged for unlimited use, sometimes a subscriber is charged according to connect time or the volume of data traffic. But since messages are distributed via a chain of computers rather than via a point-to-point connection (as is the case for a telephone call), the comparative cost of sending e-mail is usually much less than the cost of making a phone call, sending a fax or mailing a letter.
Of course, this assumes that a computer connected to the global network is only a local phone call away via modem - which is not the case for wide areas of Asia. For example, in order to connect with the Internet, a Filipino journalist in Dumaguete would have to place a long-distance call to Cebu City - assuming that a computer and modem were available to the journalist in the first place. (21)
The cost of computer connections - for equipment and network service as well as telephone charges - is one factor limiting use of the global network. Another factor has to do with training: Once a journalist is connected, will he or she know what's available and how to make use of it?
First of all, merely using a computer requires technological training. On top of that, one must learn to use arcane Internet commands and techniques. And even when one understands the mechanics of Internet use, it's often hard to find the desired resource. Since there is no central authority for the global network, there is no central guide to its resources.
Even media organizations with sophisticated electronic publishing projects, such as Singapore Press Holdings, are just starting to introduce their journalists to the Internet. In Australia, News Ltd. and the John Fairfax Group have ambitious plans to distribute information via the Internet as well as via audiotex. Yet, only a small percentage of the journalists working for those companies actually use the Internet.
This is quickly changing, however. Newspapers in Australia and other parts of the Asia-Pacific region are beginning to publish their e-mail addresses for letters to the editor as well as technology news, and the trend toward having newsrooms "plugged in" to the global network seems to be mushrooming.