At most newspapers in Asia and the Pacific, much still needs to be done in terms of computerizing internal archives. Fortunately, some low-cost PC-based library systems, such as Infodex/Infosel and Stauffer Gold, are becoming available for digital archiving. Val Williams of the Thomson Foundation cites the example of Malayala Manorama, a newspaper in Kottayam, India, that is storing all its information digitally beginning this year, starting with text and then extending the system to photos and graphics. (22)
The Thomson Foundation is one of several international organizations assisting with media development in Asia. In Singapore, the Asian Mass Communication Research and Information Center (AMIC) sponsors a number of ventures in journalism and media technology. The center maintains AMICnet, a dial-up online database of news articles and journalistic studies. It also publishes a quarterly journal called Media Asia, focusing on communications and technology. (23)
Another important resource is the Freedom Forum Asian Center in Hong Kong. The Asian Center sponsors seminars throughout Asia and also maintains a full journalism library, including a computer station for using CD-ROM databases as well as CompuServe and DataTimes, an online archive of newspaper and magazine articles. (24)
An increasing number of resources are available on CD-ROM, including encyclopedias, phone listings, economic and census statistics as well as back issues of newspapers and magazines. The state-of-the-art newspaper library should be equipped for CD-ROM as well as for online communications.
Global computer networks - including Fidonet, Bitnet, EARN and commercial services such as CompuServe as well as organizations connected directly to the Internet - can provide valuable resources. The biggest obstacle has to do with finding the right resource for the desired subject.
This is not so much a factor with the commercial services: The managers of these databases put a lot of effort into organizing their offerings and making them relatively easy to search through. But when it comes to the databases maintained by thousands of universities, businesses and government institutions around the world, the path can become wild and overgrown. There is no central authority to keep all these resources in order.
Appendix 4 provides a hint of what is available on the global network. Some resources are available via any data network with e-mail capability - including systems with Fidonet, Bitnet, EARN or Internet connections. Others are used to best advantage via a high-speed Internet connection.
In no way should this be considered a comprehensive "how-to" guide to using network resources. If you're interested in following the trail, we strongly advise you to select from the many detailed guides to Internet use.
As newspapers and other media outlets become more familiar with the new electronic environment, they are increasingly using computer networks to publish the news as well as gather it. After 20 years of experimentation, global electronic publishing seems to be finally taking hold.
The idea of giving consumers a way to select their own news electronically had its birth in Britain in 1971, when the British Post Office began looking into teletext, a one-way system to transmit text over the unused portion of a television signal. In the late 1970s the British and French governments also became involved in developing videotex, a two-way system that sends information into the home on demand, via broadcast, telephone lines or coaxial cable. In both cases, consumers could select the desired information to be displayed on a home television screen. The British teletext system, known as Ceefax, is still in operation today, as are the videotex systems, Prestel in Britain and Minitel in France.
In the 1980s there was a blossoming of videotex experiments in America, generally using dedicated terminals as well as the home television and telephone line. Media companies put millions of dollars into these ventures - but most of them ended in failure, for several reasons. Chief among those reasons was the expense: Consumers were unwilling to buy a terminal of very limited usefulness, in order to receive costly information that was not as entertaining as the television programs they were missing.
At the same time, another innovation was gaining in popularity: the personal computer. People bought them first for playing games, then for doing business, then for communicating with others. Even during the early electronic information ventures, the experimenters found that electronic mail was the most popular activity. The interest in networking grew as computers became cheaper and easier to use.
Gradually, the survivors of those early efforts in electronic news delivery were joined by newcomers. Commercial computer services began to recruit newspapers and television networks to provide information and bring in new subscribers. (25)
Some media companies have multiple ventures in electronic publishing. For example, Singapore Press Holdings - publisher of the Straits Times and several other newspapers - is a major information provider for Singapore's Teleview videotex service. Subscribers to Shine Teleview can read news from SPH as well as Kyodo News Service, or even download software and multimedia presentations, all for charges that vary according to the type of material accessed.
SPH also offers Newslink, which allows computer users to search for and retrieve company reports and newspaper articles. Newslink will soon be available worldwide via the Internet.
Then there is InfoLine, SPH's audiotex service. Audiotex allows anyone with a touch-tone telephone to receive audio reports such as stock quotes or news headlines. When users dial the audiotex number, recorded messages direct them to punch in numeric codes in order to hear the desired report. (For example, "Press 1-2-3 to hear today's weather forecast for Singapore....")
"All services are moderately successful," says SPH's Daniel Ong. "We hope to see greater revenue when we regionalize and globalize the services."
Ong's situation in Singapore may be radically different from that faced by Mostaffa in Jakarta, but the bottom line is the same: Better information technologies can bring about better understanding, greater efficiency and bigger profits.
But this process can't happen in isolation. In order to take better advantage of the global marketplace, the Asia-Pacific region needs a better understanding of the global network. Journalists can play a crucial role in this effort, by chronicling the development of this network and by taking advantage of it themselves.