Dow Jones now makes more money on its business-related information services that it does on The Wall Street Journal. Ownership of several major electronic databases has made Knight-Ridder a major player as well. For newspapers the immediate issue is consumer advertising. Whether through a form of voice mail or by way of personal computers and screen-equipped phones, electronic yellow pages could become a formidable advertising medium. Short-term as they are, classified ads could easily be incorporated into continually updated electronic yellow pages.
Video is farther down the road.
If allowed to compete in the cable business, the RBOCs could not only become the major conduit for all television but could ultimately run away with the video rental industry. First Owns The House. A fiber telecommunications network, universally accessible on a common-carrier basis, might be a fine thing. Even now, the Japanese government is investing billions to put one of its own in place. The American Newspaper Publishers Association opposes RBOC entry on antitrust grounds, arguing that the phone companies can use their control of the switches over which electronic information flows to take unfair advantage of the competition, for example by assembling information on potential customers' telephone-usage patterns.