News Analysis by Madanmohan Rao (Inter Press Service), Spring 1995
UNITED NATIONS, New York - As they chase down readers and profits, U.S. and European newspapers are embracing the latest and best technologies -- anything from voice-activated personal advertisements, to on-line 'chats'.
Not so in developing countries, where computer and telecommunications infrastructures lag far behind the North's sophisticated equipment.
A new survey by the Kelsey Group, a U.S.-based media research company, highlights just how quickly the U.S. newspaper industry has leaped forward, particularly in the area of interactive technologies.
The number of U.S. newspapers offering services based on voice-activated or on-line services jumped from 42 in February 1989, to 3,200 this past February.
The survey says newspapers are experimenting with interactive technologies mainly to remain the ''number one information source'' for their readers and to generate new revenues and profit sources.
Newspapers are trying to increase subscriber revenues through voice-activated personal advertisements, electronic classifieds, multimedia delivery of news, and on-line ''chat'' areas.
In the new on-line world, however, the gap is widening between the information ''haves'' in the industrialised North and the ''have-nots'' in the developing South because of disparities in infrastructure and policy.
Media representatives from newspapers in 26 countries met in Dallas recently to discuss the impact of on-line technologies on their news gathering and marketing operations.
Raymond Toruan, manager and publisher of 'The Jakarta Post,' pointed out that the on-line culture that is gaining increasing acceptance in the United States and Europe is ''hard to find'' in countries like Indonesia. The technologies as well as the 'critical mass' of on-line users in the North has yet to be replicated elsewhere.
Indeed, according to a survey cited in the 'Financial Times' in January, developing nations -- with 75 percent of the world's population -- have only 12 percent of all telephone lines. And those that are available are often of poor quality and low reliability.
At the recent G-7 Ministerial Conference in Brussels, where a Global Information Infrastructure (GII) initiative was launched, invited guest South African Deputy President Thabo Mbeki reminded the audience that half of humanity has never made a phone call.
Most on-line news services in the North are carried by the Internet, the world's largest conglomeration of computer networks, or through commercial on-line vendors like CompuServe, Prodigy and America OnLine. Others chose to operate via stand-alone electronic bulletin board systems.
But full access to the Internet is expensive and scarce in many developing nations, and commercial on-line services are limited in number and scope.
Recent statistics from the Merit Network Information Centre in the United States show that only up to 15 percent of the Internet hosts worldwide are in developing countries. And the six most popular commercial on-line vendors are all U.S.-based.
In addition to infrastructural and financial problems, however, newspapers in developing countries face policy constraints at the national level.
Claudine Bichara de Oliveira, a media and technology analyst from Brazil, explains that platforms like the Internet could serve as a resource for national education and research activities.
But government policy in Brazil bars newspapers and other organisations from using the Internet for commercial purposes, although that may be be subject to change. Similar restrictions apply in countries like India, according to a recent report in 'Express Computer' magazine.
Such restrictions have already been lifted in the United States and Europe.
Latin American publishers - such as Alejandro Aguirre, publisher of 'Diario las Americas' - also note that most Internet and on-line vendor traffic and documentation is in English -- an obstacle in nations where the language is not widely spoken.
Still, news entrepreneurs in many developing nations are finding alternatives, using gateways, satellite technology, and packet radio - as well as distribution bases in the North.
For instance, news from India can be found on a Web site in California. A company called 'World News OnLine' has begun distributing about a dozen Latin American newspapers on the Internet, using the U.S. as one base. In fact, several news banks about Latin America are now based in the U.S., according to a recent report in 'Internet World' magazine.
While newspapers in South Africa - like the Johannesburg-based 'Weekly Mail and Guardian' - are already available on the Internet, publications in other African countries with a less sophisticated infrastructure can look forward to future developments like AT&T's "Africa One" fiber-optic network, which will link 41 countries in Africa over the next few years.
Already, though, citizens of developing nations working or studying in the North have developed their own informal online news digests on the Internet, through mailing lists or Usenet discussion groups.
Such Internet-based fora serve important journalistic, developmental, as well as political purposes. For instance, during the Gulf War - when the U.S. virtually strait-jacketed the international media in the Persian Gulf area - the Internet was host to a myriad of international criticism against the war.
During the aborted Soviet coup, the earthquakes in Los Angeles and Kobe, and the Zapatista movement in Chaipas, the Internet has once again highlighted its importance in the media world as an autonomous news channel.
It would be imperative, then, that media outlets in developing nations embrace online methods of news gathering and dissemination.
For the moment, though, the fruits of new advances in on-line technologies are being readily reaped by newspapers in the North, while media organisations in developing nations are just beginning to catch up.