ECHO ACROSS THE WEB - A LOCAL NEWSPAPER ON THE INTERNET

The Internet, and in particular the World Wide Web, is growing at a re markable rate. It is already a significant channel for information dis tribution and looks set to become a universal medium. A demonstration of how a local newspaper might use this medium was developed for inclu sion in a seminar, taking advantage of the fact that most local newspa pers already use electronic means of text and graphic manipulation in their production. This paper describes the process from the point at w hich articles and graphics were supplied electronically by the UK's Lo ughborough Echo through to their inclusion in Web pages, and their eve ntual display via a Web browser to readers on the Internet. It looks c ritically at how this process might be embedded in the normal producti on of a local newspaper and discusses the likely content, readership, publishers' motivation and the future of such a process.