New Job for a Newbie   

For the first time in more than 20 years as a journalist, Michael Bales won't be seeing his final product on newsprint. He's the Orlando Sentinel 's new associate managing editor for electronic publishing, and his mission is to develop and oversee the paper's new online and interactive TV news services.

"To me the biggest challenge will not be figuring out what kind of news will fit the video or online formats," Bales says, "but getting the news staff to think differently."

A newcomer to cyberspace, Bales will be encouraging his colleagues to follow his lead. Until recently, he had only a passing interest in things electronic. "I'm not a computer whiz," he says. "I'm like a lot of other people."

Bales, 44, says the prerequisite for his job was journalism skills, not computer expertise; three online techies have been hired for that. His role is to help plan and execute the new services, and to alleviate staff anxieties triggered by the endeavor.

"There are some concerns that they're going to have to do too much work," Bales says. The system allows readers to correspond with the paper by E-mail and some staffers are afraid of being inundated.

Bales' past positions at the Sentinel – deputy managing editor for metropolitan news, assistant state editor and national editor – didn't necessarily prime him for the World Wide Web. His degree from Mercer University was in political science, not computer science.

To prepare himself for his new gig, Bales took a field trip last December to ChicagoLand TV , the Tribune Co.'s 24-hour cable news channel. The Tribune Co., owner of the Orlando Sentinel and the Chicago Tribune , has been a newspaper industry leader in new information technology (see "The High-Tech Trib," April 1994).

"This whole thing," Bales says, "is a learning adventure for me, too."