Cyberspace Journalism   

There's no doubt that electronic newspapers and magazines are the flavor du jour. But are they more flash than substance? And will they ever make money?

THEY SAID HotWired looked like a newsroom. Not like any newsroom I've ever seen. Ringed with cloudy windows, the former sewing factory has been transformed into a cavernous space. As HotWired grew, seamstresses fled; walls were crushed and open space now is brimming with young, enthusiastic cyber-editors and producers pioneering their way onto the World Wide Web.

Hot pink and black wires snake across the ceiling. Evian and Crystal Geyser waters are the beverages of choice. Maria, a yellow lab belonging to the design director, moseys by, wearing a blue ribbon to protest censorship on the Net and a tasteful set of pearls. She's the most dressed up member of HotWired. Women don't wear makeup. With a few exceptions, men don't wear ties.

The chief operating officer, the marketing director and the legal counsel share space with the newsroom staff. Nobody has an office. A surreal six-foot flower-like lamp looks like vegetation from Neptune. On the sign-in sheet, one person gave as a reason for visiting: "spiritual enlightenment"; another wrote "kicks and giggles."

"I 'M WORKING MORE HOURS , making less money, but I'm happier," says HotWired's copy chief, Pete Danko, a recent emigré from the San Francisco Examiner. "I feel better about my future. I have a feeling it's going somewhere."

The switch meant a departure from tradition, a new way of thinking, of editing, including the incorporation of audio and video into stories. It meant tossing out the AP Stylebook in favor of rules established by Wired magazine, the ad rich, beautiful print cousin of HotWired. Wired's Ten Commandments, which sit by Danko's elbow, include "Don't Sanitize" and the "We're not in newspapers anymore" directive: "Invent New Words."

So much happens so fast on the Net that HotWired, which has been in existence since October 1994, is considered old and established. To Danko, Web years are like dog years. Flourishing for a few fortnights is a feat. Stagnate and you die.

HotWired is constantly evolving, not into a newspaper, not into an entertainment magazine, but into something interactive and different. But is journalism being committed here? Or are these people simply larding up cyberspace with splashy graphics, news of the Net and fun factoids? Is this the future of news? Or is it some fantastic but short-lived journey?

THE STAMPEDE to put information on the Net may have begun with individual self-expression. Now it's clearly market driven. Stand-alone news and feature services have popped up online while the number of daily newspapers in cyberspace has tripled in a year, with some 175 now on the World Wide Web. Millions upon millions of dollars are being spent, even though no one yet knows how to turn a profit, or what effect newspapers online will have on circulation figures at their print parents.

Despite the costs, nearly all the news on the Net is being served up free to everyone (although that's beginning to change, so enjoy these halcyon days). Each site is trying to make itself so clever, colorful and appealing that it becomes a daily habit. Each is competing not only against other forms of media, but also against thousands of other sites. So much experimentation is going on so fast that you can observe the changes daily. In the two months since AJR's last Internet-related feature (The New Journalist, April), the Wall Street Journal (full text) and the Los Angeles Times have been launched online. And other sites have changed dramatically.

"This is not a land grab," says David Simons, president of Digital Video Corp., an online business development firm. "This is jockeying for position in sand dunes. Nobody is making money that I know of. Certainly not on the content side."

Observes Paul Sagan, president and editor of new media for Time Inc., "It's the chicken or the egg. Which comes first, the content or the audience with the money?" Pathfinder, Time Warner's megasite, offers a Coney Island of publications, including People (updated daily), a daily Time, Asiaweek, Money Magazine, Fortune, Sports Illustrated, Sports Illustrated for Kids, Entertainment Weekly, dozens of others -- enough detours to get lost for days.

M OST OF THE NEWSPAPERS on the Net are producing "shovelware," print stories reproduced on Web pages, with few changes other than key words painted hypertext blue that offer readers links to stories with greater depth.

For the most part, HotWired's features tend to be about the Web. Swathed in natural fibers, young people are scrunched over HotWired's computers, trolling for sites and stories on the Net that they can write about for their site. A basic difference between this setting and a traditional newsroom is that these people don't go out to cover stories. They largely cover what's on the Internet, which is what many sites do. It's as if most of those working on the Web are standing in a circle holding up mirrors to one another. HotWired just does it better than most.

"We make plenty of mistakes every day," says Chip Bayers, one of HotWired's executive producers, "and we're proud of it. We're still learning the form. It's like the early days of radio when people read newspapers on the radio."And HotWired has begun branching out, producing stories from around the world beyond the Net. Newspaper journalism with attitude.

Under the direction of David Weir, a onetime editor at Mother Jones and Rolling Stone, and cofounder of the Center for Investigative Reporting, HotWired runs some of the best political coverage anywhere. It's politics among consenting adults.

The Netizen, HotWired's political section, provides "Daily Braindumps from the Campaign Front," spicy, incisive accounts of the candidates' activities. A piece by staffer John Heilemann, formerly of the Economist and now HotWired's "boy on the bus," described Sen. Robert Dole, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, as "muttering, mumbling, spitting out staccato bursts of simplistic assertions that have been the hallmark of his campaign this year."

Authored by such writers as iconoclastic media critic Jon Katz and Netraker Brock N. Meeks, HotWired's political pieces may be laced with the kind of street lingo that would cause mass cancellations if they ran in daily newspapers. Stories tend to be heavy on opinion and angle, zippier, looser in language yet tighter in length than in a newspaper or magazine.

A FTER THE REPUBLICAN PRIMARIES wound down, the Netizen seemed to falter. But by late April, it was breaking ground again with Heilemann shadowing Clinton in Japan. One piece contrasted a Clinton speech praising Japan's receptiveness toward more American imports, specifically cell phones, with a visit to Japanese electronic stores, where Heilemann had a tough time finding a Motorola.

"We have to prove there is an audience," Weir says. If enough people visit the Netizen (you can track the number of "hits" or visits to a site per day) there could be more news-driven stories to follow.

"I think what you're looking at," Weir says, "is honestly the birth of a new mass media. It's happening right before our eyes...it's global...and it's headquartered in San Francisco."