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NEW YORK — During its
first day of public trading yesterday, the stock of online financial
news service TheStreet.com clawed skyward, offering proof that
investors are still bullish about Internet stocks. The auspicious
initial public offering also signaled a "thumbs up for quality
journalism online," Jamie Heller, the company's executive editor,
told a roomful of online news professionals last night.
"The Internet is a very good medium for communicating quality
news and journalism and that for a long time was in doubt," Heller
said. "When I was trying to recruit for TheStreet.com, people were
asking, 'Is the Internet here to stay?' The skepticism was
overwhelming."
Eroding that skepticism today is a marriage of immediacy and
original information, said Heller and fellow panelists during the
discussion, "Online News: What Is It Good For?" It was the inaugural
program of the Online News Association, an educational organization
for professional journalists working online. About 90 people
attended the discussion in Manhattan.
Because TheStreet.com is subscriber-based, Heller said, "we feel
we have to give people something they can't get anywhere else, and
that's why we've been dedicated to original journalism. The people
we've brought to TheStreet.com are journalists who are smart and
creative who want to do their own work and are not interested in
editing the wires. There are a lot of jobs for writing online now
because people are seeing the Web as an unbeatable medium for
financial journalism."
Real-time financial information and perspective are key to a
successful online news organization, agreed Rich Jaroslovsky,
managing editor of the Wall Street Journal Interactive Edition, which has
280,000 subscribers, 70% of whom are not print Wall Street
Journal readers.
"For them, we are The Wall Street Journal, and therefore when I
hear the debate about using print content online" — a practice
disparagingly referred to online as "shovelware" — "I have to step
back and say those people need The Wall Street Journal-caliber news
and information and it's not really relevant to us as the providers
of that information what medium we use to [convey] that."
Underscoring that point, Jaroslovsky says, is that among the
Journal's print and interactive editions, original material
circles back on itself. "The Wall Street Journal Europe is
interested in and will probably begin publishing our e-commerce
column. So ultimately it becomes irrelevant where that information
originated. What becomes critical is, are you providing valuable
information to your subscribers and users?"
Janice Castro, editor of Time.com,
also took exception to the shovelware dig, noting that a good news
site is a mix of newness and the brand that subscribers have come to
know. About half of the site's content is original, but "there's
always a very substantial interest [online] in the stories from the
magazine and I'm sort of tired of the word shovelware," she said,
noting that the site's traffic always spikes on Sunday, the day
before the print magazine hits the stands. "What we're doing online
is trying to create an information experience ... a menu of
content."
"One of the unique values we bring to the Web," Castro added, "is
[recognizing] that interactive and community are so important."
She noted a feature begun on the site about a month ago that
allows users to ask Time.com staff questions about Kosovo. "We've gotten hundreds of
thousands of letters and the questions are so good ... what our news
organizations can do in effect is invite you into our virtual
newsroom," Castro said.
Once in agreement that online news is good for absolutely
something, panelists offered the assembled news professionals tips
for how to ensure quality journalism online:
