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The
Internet and Online Publishing
by Alan Dorow
Thanks to Al Gore
and his brilliant creation, we finally have a truly interactive publishing
medium. In print and television, you need a lot of resources to get
out your message. With television in particular, you have to depend
on the relentless pressure of Nielsen ratings and advertisers who rightfully
demand a return on their large investments.
But on the wilds
of the World Wide Web, almost anything is possible for anyone with a
modest amount of investment. As long as you have the kind of content
people want to see, you are assured an audience. As with the rest of
the world of communications, access doesn’t guarantee any kind
of meaningful content, but the entry to this world is easy and relatively
cheap.
For me, the Internet is a wonderful opportunity. Growing up in Kansas
helped me appreciate wide-open spaces and the freedoms we have in this
red-white-and-blue draped country. The wide-open nature of online publishing
is a natural extension of the kind of freedom of expression we enjoy
under our Constitution.
I think photography and visual story telling are the most compelling
way to communicate. The biggest problem with photography and filmmaking,
though, is the cost involved with mass-producing the images and films
we want the rest of the world to see. An image may be worth a thousand
words, but it costs more to print a photograph than it does to print
a selection of text. With the Internet, however, the costs of publishing
photographs go down dramatically. As a result, you can present more
photographs and present a fuller story than you can in a magazine or
newspaper.
And even though broadband hasn’t reached its potential yet with
most Internet users, video has a tremendous potential to transform the
way people experience online storytelling. If an online publisher puts
together videos in a concise and thoughtful way, the viewer can choose
what he wants to see when he wants to see it and view the movies in
an intimate environment of his choosing.
Tying all of these elements together are the interactive possibilities
of viewer involvement though online forums and messaging. At Journal
E, we try to connect the community of online viewers who visit our site
for specific stories about topics that interest them. One story in particular
illustrates this idea:
We published “Without
Sanctuary” on Journal E over two years ago. A powerful story
that features postcards that were made of lynchings in America, “Without
Sanctuary” speaks strongly to many people who are horrified by
these corrupt events in American history. We’ve reproduced the
original postcards based on the collection by James Allen and John Littlefield,
and have included a forum which invites viewers to leave their comments
about the images. At first, I thought a few people might take the time
to participate in a forum about the story. As it turned out, thousands
of people have joined the forum and we had to divide up the comments
into long weekly pages. People tell their friends about the story, and
the site continues to grow with more and more reader comments.
I see this kind of story as part of the future of online publishing:
a kind of publishing which exists and grows over time as more and more
people become involved with the content of the stories. The content
doesn’t exist merely as a show on Thursday night or an October
magazine piece that gets thrown out with the recyclables – it lives
and grows over time online with new links and word-of-mouth advertising.
We’re working in a medium that is barely ten years old. The Internet
has already changed the nature of worldwide communication and will no
doubt be a major factor in the way people, business and governments
talk to each other in the future. It is way too early to predict how
real money will be made with online publishing, but this is a powerful
medium which can look great and give access to the many talented story
tellers of our time.
And I’m having a great time trying to make it come together.
Alan Dorow is
the Editor and Publisher of Journal
E.
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