n078  1855  06 Jul 80
 
BC-VIDNEWS 2takes
Trial Runs Begin in U.S. on Home Delivery of 'Electronic Newspapers'
    
IN-DEPTH REPORT
 
By DEIRDRE CARMODY
c. 1980 N.Y. Times News Servicev
    NEW ORK - After nearly three centuries in which newspapers have
been printed on paper, the first major experiments in the United
States on the ''electronic newspaper'' got under way last week.
    For American newspapers, many of which are still uncertain whether a
good offense is the best defense against the encroachment of
electronics into the news business, it is a landmark development in
the world of home computers, which ultimately are expected to
revolutionize the way Americans receive information.
    Last week The Columbus (Ohio) Dispatch began transmitting its entire
editorial content to 3,000 home terminals around the country on a
computer system called CompuServe. For $5 an hour, the home viewer
can sit down at a computer keyboard and call up on the computer
screen a list of all the stories appearing in The Dispatch that day,
select any article and read it or scan it, much as he would a
newspaper spread out before him, and then go on to the next selection.
    Also, the viewer has access to articles by The Associated Press,
plus games, advertising and other consumer services.
    By this time next year, if all goes according to plan, 13 other
newspapers will be available in homes on the CompuServe system. The
papers are The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles
Times, The Chicago Sun-Times, The St. Louis Post-Dispatch, The
Minneapolis Star and Tribune, The Atlanta Journal and Constitution,
The Norfolk Virginian-Pilot and Ledger-Star, The San Francisco
Chronicle and The Middlesex News of Framingham, Mass.
    Another experiment has just been started by the Knight-Ridder
Newspapers in Coral Gables, Fla. The $1.5-million project provides
news, advertising and other consumer services via 200 personal
computers installed in area homes at no cost to the participating
families. Knight-Ridder is supplying the computer and content and the
Bell System is providing terminals and the telephone lines that link
a central computer to the homes.
    Thirty-one advertisers, including Eastern Airlines, Sears, Roebuck &
Co. and Merrill Lynch & Co., are part of the Knight-Ridder project.
If viewers want to order goods, from a local department store to a
liquor store, they type messages into their terminals indicating
which credit card they want the goods billed to and how and when they
would like the material delivered. The viewer then transmits that
information to the central computer.
    What this will mean for the future of newspapers is a matter of
debate.
    ''We started four years ago asking outselves about the whole range
of information technology, if any of them represented a threat to the
newspaper business and to what extent we should be concerned
defensively,'' said Jim Batten, vice president of Knight-Ridder
Newspapers.
    ''Our concern was that if people might get their information in this
way, they might no longer need newspapers.''
    (MORE)
    
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