Block · one region of the page, as the scanner read it. It may hold a whole story, part of one, several, or an advertisement; stitching blocks into articles is the next step. Text is supplied OCR.
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ays into the news business while making Turneresque declarations about the end of newspapers.
But, true to history, the technology appears to be carving out new consumer demand instead of replacing old media.
Locally, America Online is in the process of building news pages that compete with newspapers as a source for local information. The project is called Digital Cities. The news operation is run by my friend, Tom Grubisich, who was once an editor here at Times Community Newspapers. A career journalist, Tom is leading the initiative to build a 50city network of news and resource pages by forming alliances with local media companies.
AOL takes local newspaper content and makes it available to the wider AOL audience.
“We can’t drill down to Reston, Vienna and Leesburg until the larger city network is created,” he says. “That’s where the partnership with you guys comes in.”
“Partnership” is the key word. Apparently, Steve Case sees a place for the newspaper in his digital empire. But Grubisich doesn’t see AOL moving so quickly into our traditional news arena. For instance, AOL has created “graffiti boards” where messages follow one another in a seamless commentary by users themselves.
“The increasing percentage
94.3%