This is a book about the electronic publishing, the way it is done and the forms it takes. Its subject is online information services and how they will affect the narrative form of the individual news story as well as the general context of daily and weekly journalism. The central argument in this text is that the marriage of computers and online libraries creates a radically new technology that will fundamentally alter the relations between writer and news subject. News is used here as a symbol and, at times, a metaphor for the more complex topic of public information, its content and its diffusion. Daily and weekly news reports, disseminated in print and by broadcast are, after all, modern society's primary venue for public information. Drawing from the emerging scholarly work in this field, and from the real-life experiences of working journalists who often watch their professional world being transformed one e-mail message at a time, we examine why publishers use the Internet, what changes it makes in how they approach doing their jobs, and what differences they see in conducting their daily newsgathering via this medium than any other.

Table of Contents:
Preface I. PUBLISHING IN DISTRIBUTED COMMUNICATION ARCHITECTURE : 1. Introduction 2. News and Survival 3. Technology and the Information Specialist 4. The Shape of the Net 5. Durability of Journalistic Practice on the Internet 6. Data Collection and Verification 7. Data Compression II. PUBLIC OPINION : GLEANING POINTS OF VIEW ELECTRONICALLY : 1. Introduction 2. Public's Opinion 3. Electronic Scientist 4. What To Do? III. PUBLISHING IN ONLINE ENVIRONMENT : 1. Introduction IV. ONLINE NEWS : 1. Online Technologies 2. Print, Electronic 3. News and Print 4. Database Technologies 5. Tort Reform 6. Wall Street Journal : i. Introduction ii. The "Debate" 7. Creating the Context : i. Other Approaches 8. Computer-Research 9. Changes 10. Newsroom Effect : The Beat 11. Story Levels 12. Story Levels : Contextual 13. Structural Context 14. War on Drugs 15. The Story 16. Conclusion V. IMPACT OF ONLINE TECHNOLOGIES ON PUBLISHING : 1. Introduction 2. Online Reporting 3. Libraries and Librarians 4. Print Media Online 5. Methodology VI. PRACTICAL APPROACHES TO ONLINE PUBLISHING : 1. Introduction 2. Information, Interaction and Community 3. Why Publish on The World Wide Web? 4. Why should Newspaper Explore Publishing Online? 5. Online Campus Press Readership 6. The Future VII. COMPUTING IN PUBLISHING : 1. Introduction 2. Realities of Sketches 3. Technological Legitimation : i. From Legitimation to Implementation ii. Academic Computing into the 1990's 4. No Social Revolution 5. Instructional Computing 6. Inequalities in Computing Access 7. Concluding Reflections VIII. SEARCHING STRATEGIES : ELECTRONIC AND TRADITIONAL : 1. Introduction 2. Libraries and Searches : i. Fixed Text 3. Traditional News Reasearch Startegies 4. Electronic Library 5. Electronic Model 6. Search : EAF 7. Complex Search : A Medical Example 8. Sources 9. Thematic Sources 10. Interview Land Evaluation 11. Controlling of Search 12. Legal Paradigm IX. TECHNOLOGY AND PUBLISHING IN THE ELECTRONIC WORLD : 1. Introduction 2. Electronic Newsroom : i. Electronic Editing 3. Pagination : i. Computer-Assisted Reporting 4. New Forms of Electronic Publishing 5. Conclusion X. ELECTRONIC LIBRARIES : 1. Introduction 2. Vocabulary 3. Compuserve 4. Informal Sources 5. Formal Sources : i. Specialty Databases ii. IQuest : Screens iii. IQuest : Simple Searches iv. Gateway versus Packager-Based Services v. Librarians versus Writers 6. Specialty Services 7. Clipping Services and Business News : i. Dow Jones News Services ii. Business Example 8. Critical Databases 9. Business and Financial 10. General Information 11. Government Cendata 12. Medicine and Science 13. Private versus Public Access 14. Private versus Public Information : United States 15. Conclusion