integration with integrity
New York, NY 10014
Phone: 1-775-205-6184
Fax: 1-757-299-7638
For information, write to info@integrita.com
|
integration with integrity |
30 Christopher Street, Suite 7A New York, NY 10014 Phone: 1-775-205-6184 Fax: 1-757-299-7638 For information, write to info@integrita.com |
Q. What is XML?
A. XML, short for eXtensible Markup Language, is a proposed Internet standard that could supplant HTML (HyperText Markup Language), the language of the World Wide Web.
Q. What is cross-media integration?
A. Cross-media integration is a method of conveying information in many different media, without the need to re-engineer the information each time. For example, say I have access to a chef preparing a recipe. I might want to prepare a video clip of the chef's work for cable TV, an online version of the recipe for the Web, a text version for e-mailing, a searchable version for CD-ROM, and a printed version for a recipe book. One piece of information, many channels.
Q. Isn't cross-media integration still five years away?
A. I don't believe so. While it isn't happening today at major institutions like The Washington Post or NBC News, history shows that smaller entrepreneurs, willing to take a chance, can reap big rewards in less time.
In 1981 the buzz in the industry was pagination. There was a running joke: each January, pagination was still five years away, just as it had been the previous January.
In 1982, The Pasadena Star-News became the first fully paginated newspaper. The experts said it couldn't be done, but those pages coming out of the typesetter, with nary a printer in the composing room, proved otherwise.
What happened in Pasadena in 1982 that solved a problem many newspapers -- including my alma mater, The New York Times -- were still struggling with in 1998? The answer was technology combined with a culture shift under creative leadership. All three were essential.
Q. How does XML fit in with this?
A. XML is the Esperanto of new media. In the near future we can expect to see XML-compliant Web sites (retrofitted to deliver HTML to the X-impaired).
Like Esperanto, however, XML is a one-size-fits-all language. It needs a vocabulary, and there are a number of industry-specific groups proposing standards. Should the creator of a work be identified with a BYLINE tag or an AUTHOR tag? What format should a timestamp use? For successful cross-media communication, these questions need answers.
Once the standards are set, however, communication is a snap. Remember the old wire service transmission guidelines? They were set by ANPA/RI and opened the way to computerized transmission of news by The Associated Press and other services. Today the transmission guidelines are being re-engineered into XML-compliant form. Among other things, we can expect that it will be possible to transmit the "at" sign, @, which is currently prohibited. (That restriction makes it quite difficult to transmit e-mail addresses!)
Similarly, we can expect that whatever standards are set in 1998 will seem hopelessly outdated in 15 years. That's O.K. As the name says, XML is extensible. That means it can be updated as needs change. Some of the dozens of vocabularies under discussion are:
Q. Is the technology ready?
A. Not today. That answer may change within the next few months. We are already starting to see vendors deliver XML-compatible software, which is amazing in itself, as XML was only formally put forth in February of this year.
Just delivering such software, however, won't solve the production problems inherent in cross-media integration. If you're a TV production company, for instance, do you have the staff to keyboard in those recipes? If you're a newspaper, do you have the staff to shoot video in addition to the still photographs you already use? How do you train people?
And how do you tie the pieces together? The vendors are just starting to address that issue.
Q. What can be done now?
A. Most newspapers are 50 years behind their video competitors, so time is of the essence. The Orlando Sentinel, part of the Tribune Company, showed off some of its efforts during the most recent Nexpo. It's on the right track.
Seeing assignment editors from television and print working side by side is refreshing. The next step will be to stop thinking of stories as media-specific. Instead of thinking, "How can we tell this newspaper story in video?", people will think, "How can we tell this story in print and video?" It's already starting to happen.
On-demand video is less than five years from widespread adoption. It's already penetrating some urban markets. Newspapers that wish to compete will be wise to acquire or partner with local video news sources. And does your newspaper subscribe to AP Television or another international video news source?
Many newspaper companies have enormous information resources in a decentralized structure. It requires a cross-company effort to build bridges, with these results:
Newspapers should start small to meet mission-critical needs, while never losing sight of their strategic goals. They must avoid the trap of creating more one-off systems. By starting with a pilot project, newspapers can achieve measurable results with minimal risk before deciding whether to proceed further down this road.
Q. What is the competition doing?
A. Newspapers find themselves in a new market with players that they haven't previously considered as direct competitors:
These competitors are forming alliances with enormous financial and journalistic resources, including ready access to text and video.
And I believe it's only a matter of time until smaller-market television stations begin to adopt community publishing. True, they won't have a stringer at the local Rotary Club, nor will they have someone transcribing crime news at the police headquarters. Instead, they'll enable the Rotary Club and the police to publish news themselves. The question is, will it make a difference to readers? Will it make enough of a difference for readers to continue home delivery of the newspaper?
Q. What about competitors with no journalistic background?
A. We've seen information products coming from a number of companies with no tradition of journalism: Yahoo, Microsoft and Excite, to name a few. They have built hugely valuable brand names through repeat traffic. Telephone and cable companies are attacking the local retail advertising dollar. SBC (formerly Southwestern Bell) has been especially expansionist.
New technologies provide new distribution opportunities:
Newspapers must learn to adapt quickly to these new technologies, assessing their value as distribution channels and building new information products suited to them. Rapid time to market for these new products will be essential for success.
Q. Why should I be concerned about this now?
A. Time is of the essence.
In 1982, The Pasadena Star-News became the world's first fully paginated newspaper. Two years later at The New York Times, pagination planning began in the newsroom -- a project that ultimately took more than a decade.
Why so long? Because a culture shift was required -- the walls between the newsroom and other departments needed to be lowered first.
Today, six months is considered a long lead time for the pace of change in the interactive marketplace. Newspapers need to be able to respond quickly to the market's requirements.
The good news is that the walls have come down at many newspapers. The culture has shifted. Now newspapers need technology that can provide new products on deadline for a variety of delivery channels: the Internet, proprietary networks, print.
At the typical newspaper, production systems have been wired together almost as an afterthought. Creating Web sites and other new-media products is a time-consuming, laborious process, the result of customized, one-off systems. This infrastructure cannot scale to meet the growing demands of the marketplace.
Taking the approach of cross-media integration does not foreclose the dream of creating a grand-slam money-making machine -- "another Yahoo" -- in fact, it enhances it. At the same time, an integrated approach permits creating new products for a range of markets and delivery mechanisms.
The three basic guidelines are:
I believe there is a small TV station or midsize daily newspaper ready to accept the challenge and reap the rewards. Figure a year for planning, installation, and training. And expect to see true cross-media integration before the year 2000.
John Freed led the pagination effort of The Pasadena Star-News in 1982 and was deputy editor of The New York Times on the Web in 1998. He is now working on cross-media integration projects, including a book on the subject.