The End of the Beginning: The Next Generation of Online Publications By David Abrahamson Northwestern University AEJMC, Baltimore, MD 8/6/98 Abstract: Since its first acceptance by the general public in 1995, the World Wide Web and the importance of its role as a medium of communication have grown exponentially. Numerous publications, both those that are Web-specific and those that are brand extensions of existing print products, have flourished online. This paper suggests that a first phase in the evolution for online publications may be closing and a second is about to commence. Further, it is argued that the next generation of online publications will be characterized by: both greater specialization and broader, less technologically driven appeal; increased commercialization but also wide variety in the intensity and scope of commitment by commercial enterprises; and a significantly growing role for women as both producers and consumers of online information products. The world of online publication is, in late 1998, in the process of ongoing transition. It is not exactly a turning point, for that implies a well-defined moment, fixed in time and occurrence. Rather, it continues to evolve in ways both predicted and unforeseen. It can, however, be argued that a certain marker has been passed in the evolution of online publications -- that we are indeed in the midst of a phase change. That, without seeming unduly millenarian, we are in fact seeing the end of the beginning. And that the character of the next generation of online publications has begun to make itself clear. It was, after all, only three or four short years ago, that the first general awareness of the possibilities of the online world dawned. The terminology itself, "World Wide Web," came into currency only in early 1995, roughly the same time as the first popular browser software, Mosaic, was being celebrated by some as the next big thing. And by the end of that year, Mosaic had begun to fall out of favor and a new browser, Netscape, was becoming widely available. As the first generation of online publications came into being in 1995 and 1996, form and content -- even purpose and intent -- went largely undefined. It was a very free-flowing, very experimental, very ideologically diverse time, with both magazines and newspapers discovering and testing the medium's unexplored possibilities.[1] If the early days of infancy for the online world are now over, the operative assumption is that it has now entered what might be seen as its adolescence: a time both of significant if awkward growth and of emergent direction and character. As the next generation of online publications appears, the future of the medium is in many ways starting to clarify itself. Like most crystal balls, mine is very, very cloudy, and I can offer only the vaguest guesses about the longer-term prospects. But it is clear that enough veils have lifted to suggest a number of present and likely continuing trends. The underpinning rationale here is that these trends, five in all, are in fact well enough established that it is reasonable to assume that they will persist for the foreseeable future -- which, given the volatility of the new media, it would perhaps be unwise to define as more than the next 18 to 24 months. The first of these trends is specialization. In many ways, the development of the online realm has followed the model of American media development in effect for the last five decades of the 20th Century.[2] In summary form, the current "main sequence" suggests that mediums that have originated as mass vehicles will, over time, begin to define and serve specific niches. The move toward specialization, clearly in historical evidence in broadcasting, magazines and to a lesser extent newspapers, now seems to be the case with online publications. In the very beginning of the online world, many of the newly created niches were, to the apparent delight of hyper-Web-active 14-year-old males, largely devoted to the provision of soft-core pornography.[3] In contrast, most of the rest of the sites were fairly general in their orientation. Today, however, the dominant online trend seems to privilege significant content specialization. Simply put, there are more different sites serving more different audiences -- and, driven by diverging audience interests, the content of the sites themselves is in turn becoming more differentiated. A corollary aspect of divergence under the heading of specialization is the growing variance between the form and content of online publications and their originating print products. As recently as 18 months ago, if one browsed a typical magazine or newspaper website, its information would identically mirror the hard-copy print version of the publication. In many cases, it was little more that an archive of the print product, or possibly a select full- text showcase for previously printed articles and features. Now many publications are coming to believe that other principles of conception and presentation may apply. As a result, the information being put online is no longer exactly the same as that contained in the print product. However, there is as yet no industry-wide agreement on the operative principles to be applied when taking information originating in print form and putting it online, and it is clear there are a number of different schools of thought. Some publishers, for example, believe that the average reader's online attention span is limited to one screen's worth of information; others think that three screens are acceptable. Some believe that flashing on-screen advertising makes no difference; others find it an abomination. With all the different online presentation solutions currently in use, it is evident that there is as yet very little unanimity on trade practices. In contrast, in the traditional print world, both the visual constituent components -- headline, deck, body copy, lead paragraph, lead art, call-out and caption -- and their interrelation are well established, having evolved into their current form over the last hundred years. But the same does not exist online yet, in large part because the way information is visually consumed online is so different from the way it is consumed on the page. Given the conventional computer monitor and its bunker-like "25-line viewing slit," how the online reader actual reads is determined by all manner of visual field factors, cognition/learning theory considerations and ergonomic issues. These are topics about which people have strong opinions, but a generally agreed-upon solution, the received wisdom, has not yet emerged.[4] Coincident with the trend toward specialization is another which seems almost contradictory: the embourgeoisement of the online world. In effect, the end of the Era of the Geek is in sight. As recently as two years ago, the online world was largely populated by a relatively small number of people. Cultish in social orientation and vaguely postmodern in cultural attitude, these self-described "netizens" or "digiterati" shared a then-rare technological expertise, a jargon with which to certify the possession of that expert knowledge and a generally elitist cum libertarian ideology about the societal role of information technology.[5] But the exponential increase in the number of people online in just the last 18 months has severely undermined the proprietary sense of exclusion; in short, competence online has clearly become a widely distributed, unexceptional middle-class avocation.[6] From the most recent data available, at least 25 million and perhaps as many as 50 million American adults are currently online, which means that the proportion of the adult population using the Web is fast approaching 20 percent.[7] It probably needn't be argued, but this level of participation suggests, by definition, a sociocultural activity of significant consequence. To illustrate the point, even using the lower endpoint of Internet usage, 25 million people in the United States do not own boats, and fewer than 25 million paid a visit to a ocean or lakefront beach last summer.[8] By way of interesting contrast, the current situation in Europe is markedly different. Both online access charges and basic telecommunication service are quite expensive in Europe. As a result, the most recent estimate is that, for most of Western Europe, less than two percent of the adult population is online.[9] If the Unites States model holds, one can argue that Europe has yet to experience, but will likely shortly undergo, this process of embourgeoisement. A third major trend characterizing online publications is the continuing commercialization of the online world.[10] This process, it must be noted at least in passing, is neither uniformly applauded[11] nor can in any sense be regarded as complete. The magic formula for online profitability remains elusive. At present, no one has yet defined a workable model to ensure that an online publication is profitable. In the online world, there are certainly no guarantees -- particularly in the sense, for example, that in the consumer magazine field, with a certain number of advertisers willing to pay a certain advertising rate to reach a certain number of readers and with certain level of operating costs, you can be assured of making money. Online, such reliable models do not yet exist, but such matters are a lot clearer today than they were a year ago.[12] Nevertheless, as with most media products, the general principle of keeping costs low and perceived value to the consumer high does seem to pertain online. An interesting example of this is the online publication, Salon magazine, a relatively upscale political/cultural/literary magazine with a mildly contrarian West-Coast sensibility.[13] Its advertising rate, expressed in terms of cost per thousand (CPM), is $44, which is a number from which a set of inferences can be drawn. By way of comparison, the median CPM, the top of the Bell Curve, for most consumer media in the United States is approximately $30. At the low end of the scale are undifferentiated products aimed at mass audiences with no great proclivity to consume; prime-time television, for example, has a CPM of about $5 for a 30-second spot. The major newsmagazines with large undifferentiated audiences have CPMs in the $15 to $20 range. Many women's magazines are in the $20 to $25 range. More specialized publications, however, can charge their advertisers between $40 and $60, because their readers both form a well-defined market that advertisers want to reach and are more active consumers.[14] So the fact that an online magazine, Salon, can charge an advertising CPM of $44 is significant. In market terms, it validates the notion that, in the view of Salon's advertisers: (a) the right kind of people are regularly reading the publication, and (b) because of who they are and how they spend, these are the readers that advertisers are willing to pay a premium to reach. As a result, by keeping costs low and editorial value high -- and therefore attractive to the readers advertisers desire -- Salon currently reports making money.[15] A fourth trend that seems to define this next generation of online publications would be a marked range of commitment on the part of the enterprises which one might presume would be involved. Some media firms have committed substantial resources in staff and funding to their online presence. Time Warner, for example, has spent millions of dollars on its Pathfinder site.[16] Less tangibly but perhaps equally revealing, the third name at the very top of the Time Warner corporate masthead is the person in charge of the firm's online efforts, at present, Daniel Okrent. His title is Editor of New Media, and his prominent position in the corporate hierarchy is perhaps emblematic of the company's commitment to realizing the online potential of its publications. At the other end of the scale are a number of publishing firms which one might assume would be heavily involved in the online development of their print products -- and yet they remain at present very tentative and uncommitted in their approach. In one sense, however, this cautious strategy may be proving to have a self-fulfilling dimension to it. The fewer resources devoted to online development, the less interesting and useful the resulting site will be. The less compelling the site, the fewer readers it will attract. And the more modest the number of hits the site receives, the more convinced decision-makers will be that the company's online investment should be kept to a minimum. In many such cases, it is clear that senior executives, responding to internal norms of their firm's prevailing corporate culture concerning matters of both risk and technology, have elected to wait until the prospects of online publishing have clarified themselves considerably. As one might expect, between these two poles -- true believers at one end and, on the other, those who are still very skeptical -- lies a full spectrum of involvement. By all present indications, this vast range of commitment, viewed as a trend, is likely to persist for the foreseeable future.[17] A fifth and final trend is especially interesting because few if any observers predicted it: the growing number and importance of women online, not only as producers but as consumers of Web-based information. There has long been a cultural assumption in America -- and in the media that shapes and reflects American culture -- that a predisposition to antipathy exists between females and technology. If there are nuts and bolts going into it or wires coming out of it, most women will have nothing to do with it. As a matter of both popular imagination and scholarly inquiry, this is a long-held, historically persistent belief with deep cultural roots.[18] So one of the really fascinating datapoints to be found in the latest figures about who is and is not online in America is the suggestion that approximately 45 percent of the people online today are women.[19] It can, however, be argued with some ease that this should not be surprising. When one examines the aggregate data on media use across platforms (books, television, films, periodicals, etc.), the primacy of female consumption is indisputable. Magazines, for example, offer a particularly notable case. In numbers of titles, there are roughly one-and-a half times more womenıs magazines than there are menıs magazines in America. In numbers of readers, womenıs magazines on average have twice the circulation of menıs magazines. What these two comparisons mean in aggregate is that three-quarters of all magazine readers in the country are women.[20] With the growing number of women online -- which is an expanding subset of the growing number of women who are comfortable using computers -- it is likely that today's 45-percent number will increase dramatically in the next year or two. Stated another way, there is no reason to believe that the gender mix in this new online medium will, in the long run, be any different from the gender mix in the preceding media. In conclusion, there is ample evidence to suggest that the world of online publications is at the moment evolving from what may have been an uncertain infancy to an increasingly robust adolescence. Within the necessary caveats needed when attempting to predict both technological and sociocultural change, it seems apparent that the next generation of online publications will be characterized by both greater specialization and broader, less technologically driven appeal; increased commercialization but also wide variety in the intensity and scope of commitment by commercial enterprises; and a significantly growing role for women as both producers and consumers of online information products. ENDNOTES: [1] Aspects of the transitional state of the online world in the mid-to-late 1990s are effectively represented in Esther Dyson, Release 2.1: A Design for Living in the Digital Age (New York: Broadway Books, 1998) and Steven G. Jones, ed., Cybersociety 2.0: Revisiting Computer-Mediated Communication and Community (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 1998). [2] For explications of the various models of media development, see John Merrill and Ralph L.Lowenstein, Media, Messages and Men: New Perspectives in Communication (New York: Longman, 1979) and David Abrahamson, Magazine-Made America: The Cultural Transformation of the Postwar Periodical (Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press, 1986). [3] The astounding early success of Playboy magazine's website, measured in millions of hits per month, was, for many observers, the first conclusive evidence that actual demand existed for information that the World Wide Web could supply. Playboy's URL is . [4] Matters related to online visualization are discussed in Peter Gloor, Elements of Hypermedia Design: Techniques for Navigation and Visualization in Cyberspace (Boston: Birkhauser, 1997) and Steven Holtzman, Digital Mosaics: The Aesthetics of Cyberspace (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1997). Also, Orrin E Klapp, Overload and Boredom: Essays on the Quality of Life in the Information Age (New York: Greenwood Press, 1986) anticipated many of the important issues. [5] Two works describing the early-1990s online culture are John Brockman, Digiterati: Encounters with the Cyber Elite (San Francisco: HardWired, 1996) and Arthur Kroker and Michael A. Weinstein, Data Trash: The Theory of the Virtual Class (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1994). More general investigations of the question can be found in Sara Kiesler, ed., Culture of the Internet (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1997) and David Porter, ed., Internet Culture (New York: Routledge, 1997). [6] For well-argued dissenting views on technology's enfranchising potential, see Trevor Haywood, Info-Rich, Info-Poor: Access and Exchange in the Global Information Society (London: Bowker-Saur, 1995) and William Wresch, Disconnected: Haves and Have-Nots in the Information Age (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1996). [7] Jennifer Greenstein, "How Many? How Much? Who Knows?" Brill's Content, November 1998: 54-6, 58. [8] "Fun at Sea: Coastal Tourism, Recreation," Sea Technology, October 1998: 37-40. [9] Olivier Royant, Deputy Editor, Paris Match, interview by author, 29 July 1998, Paris, tape recording. [10] Some observers view the Internet as a unique corporate opportunity; see, for example, L. Ellis, Communicating in Chaos: Corporate Presence in the Online World (New York: Fleishman-Hillard, 1995) and Adele Gray and Gina Alphonso, New Game, New Rules: Jobs, Corporate America, and the Information Age (New York: Garland, 1996). In a similarly positive tone, Robert H. Reid, Architects of the Web: 1000 Days That Built the Future of Business (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1997) traces the Internet's recent corporate history, while more explicit promises are offered by Martha Siegel and Laurence Canter, How to Make a Fortune on the Internet (New York: HarperPerennial, 1997). [11] Compelling critiques of the growing commercialization of the information economy can be found in Jeremy Brecher and Tim Costello, Global Village or Global Pillage: Economic Reconstruction from the Bottom Up (Cambridge, MA: South End Press, 1998); Zillah Eisenstein, Global Obscenities: Patriarchy, Capitalism, and the Lure of Cyberfantasy (New York: New York University Press, 1998); and Herbert I. Schiller, Information Inequality: The Deepening Social Crisis in America (New York: Routledge, 1996). [12] Two insightful works dealing with the practices of online commerce are John Hagel and Arthur G. Armstrong, Net Gain: Expanding Markets Through Virtual Communities (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Business School Press, 1997) and Dan Schiller, Digital Capitalism: Networking the Global Market System (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1999). [13] The phrase "West-Coast sensibility" is meant to suggest a somewhat elusive set of editorial attitudes not unlike that of Harper's Magazine, which has for many years drawn a plurality of its subscriber circulation from California. Salon magazine's URL is . [14] For a full discussion of audience targeting and commensurate advertising rates, see David Abrahamson, Magazine-Made America: The Cultural Transformation of the Postwar Periodical (Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press, 1986): 55-68. [15] In a volatile field noted for qualitative rather than quantitative data, a most useful contemporary survey of online publishing can be found in Kathleen L. Endres, "'Zine but Not Heard? Editors Talk About Publishing On- Line," presented at the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication Annual Meeting, Baltimore, MD, 7 August 1998. [16] Electing to use a single-point-of-entry strategy, the URL for most Time- Warner magazines is . [17] This "mixed" view is certainly not held by everyone. Wilson P. Dizard, Meganet: How the Global Communications Network Will Connect Everyone on Earth (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1997) focuses on the presumably inevitable success of the Internet, while interesting works on the other side of the issue include Mark J. Brosnan, Technophobia: The Psychological Impact of Information Technology (New York: Routledge, 1998) and Andrew Feenberg, Questioning Technology (New York: Routledge, 1999). Even less sympathetic in tone and argument are Stephanie Mills, ed., Turning Away from Technology: A New Vision for the 21st Century. (San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 1997) and John W. Murphy, Algis Mickunas and Joseph J. Pilotta, eds., The Underside of High-Tech: Technology and the Deformation of Human Sensibilities (New York: Greenwood Press, 1986). [18] Interesting recent cultural scholarship on gender and technology includes Roger Horowitz and Arwen Mohun, eds., His and Hers: Gender, Consumption, and Technology (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1998); Bosah L. Ebo, ed., Cyberghetto or Cybertopia? Race, Class, and Gender on the Internet (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1998); Timothy V. Kaufman-Osborn, Creatures of Prometheus: Gender and the Politics of Technology (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1997); Sadie Plant, Zeroes + Ones: Digital Women + The New Technoculture (New York: Doubleday, 1997); Claudia Springer, Electronic Eros: Bodies and Desire in the Postindustrial Age (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1996); and Jennifer Terry and Melodie Calvert, eds., Processed Lives: Gender and Technology in Everyday Life (New York: Routledge, 1997). [19] Nina Teicholz, "Women Want It All, and It's All on Line," New York Times, 22 October, 1998: G,10. [20] Readership data cited here is drawn from David Abrahamson, "Who Reads What: The Implications of Gender and Readership," presented at Organization for the Study of Communication, Language and Gender Annual Conference, Hofstra University, Hempstead, NY, 16 October 1992. Copyright 1998 David Abrahamson. All rights reserved.