Summary

After many years of silence this is again an IFRA Special Report in category no. 5, Electronic Communication. When we published the preceding issues, Direct Broadcast Satellites (no. 1), Home Printed News (no. 2) and ISDN (no. 3), developments arose so quickly that we decided to cover this important subject via the monthly "IFRA Telecommunications Newsletter", and later by forming a special subsidiary, INES (Initiative for Newspaper Electronic Supplements). Because the newsletter had to be closed down and because INES’ services are available primarily to its 67 partners, it became necessary to revitalize category no. 5 of our Special Reports. As a first step, we asked Anton Jolkovski, Project Manager at INES, to write this report on the development of computer-based media, and to inform our members about the activities of newspapers in them. It’s a long way from the first AM broadcast facsimile newspapers in the 1930s, the Japanese tests within the blanking intervals of television in the 1960s, their broadband cable experiments in the 1970s and the introduction of teletex/videotex services in the 1980s, to me current-day Internet fever. As in the past, newspapers must be watchful that no other service providers take over their business. This report may help our members inform themselves about the possibilities in this field, be it to block intruders or to open new market opportunities for diversified distribution of news.