Newspapers such as the Chicago Tribune and the San Jose Mercury News already offer classified advertising online, but the Times says its own service should be faster and easier to use, because it exploits new software tools allowing a subscriber to narrow a search to particular categories of houses, jobs, or automobiles. The North American Network's RadioSpace on the World Wide Web offers scripts of news events, sound bites, a list of potential interviewees, and a link to 200 U.S. radio stations. The Web site is free to users and is sponsored by organizations that provide the information. Users are encouraged to share their own tips for morning-show comedy routines or rewriting scripts. They say they want guaranteed access to programming, but that's like saying you need to own a share of stock in a dairy to get milk.
Money buys programming.
Anyone with good programming is going to want to distribute it as broadly as possible. This is brain damage. Most of what they are doing is designed to stop their competitors from raising capital. The New York Times has bought Video News International, a video-journalism company that employs 37 reporters equipped with video cameras who shoot, edit, and script their own feature stories. The Electronic Business Co-op wants you to do business in cyberspace and pay for it with your credit card, just like you do with phone shopping.