The online news race is going to get another entry in the next month or so, when the Washington Post takes the wraps off Newsweek.com.
The newsweekly, which has been conspicuously absent from the number of large media players moving to the Web, will make the move before the end of October, said general manager and editor Michael Rogers. Until now, Newsweek online has only been available to America Online subscribers.
Newsweek will post its own content as well as daily news updates from the Washington Post.
In doing so it will face some stiff competition from online news players, including some it doesn't see in the print world.
While news is available almost everywhere online, the hottest race has been between the online counterparts of television networks CNN and MSNBC, both of which make it into the list of top sites on the Web.
"Anyone that's delivering news online is their competition," said Patrick Keane, an analyst at Jupiter Communications in New York. "As a weekly periodical that delivers news [there are only a few competitors], but online you have ABC News, MSNBC, CNN. All of these players are real competition."
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'In the long run, we're looking at ways we can cooperate far more than we do in print' -- Newsweek General Manager Michael Rogers  |
The free site will also feature daily versions of the Cyberscope and Periscope sections of the magazine, copying a daily Newsmaker that Newsweek puts out through its America Online offering.
"One thing we do not want to do is get into being a daily newspaper. Fortunately we have a joint relationship with a world class daily and we'll be working closely with them" for news updates, said Rogers.
Testing before going live
"In the long run, we're looking at ways we can cooperate far more than we do in print," he said.
The company has been quietly testing the site for almost a month, setting up usability labs in New York and Washington. Rogers said that its important to the company that all the design aspects are decided before the site goes live. "We don't want to be testing in public," he said.
An important aspect of that design is that the site be "light," Rogers said -- designed for fast downloads. As far as multimedia goes, the Newsweek.com site will focus mainly on photos, he said.
"We're going to be very, very aggressive with still photography. The Web has been very good at that. Also, we'll work with audio, because we think the Web is starting to be a great medium to deliver that to a large audience," he said.
Medium not ready for video
But as for video, Rogers thinks there's still some work to be done.
"We think it's a pretty narrow market right now," Rogers said. "If you're going to put your money in journalism, we think this television thing will catch on as a [video] delivery method."
