Bruce Siceloff, the News & Observer's online editor, hopes newspapers can become more relevant and that feedback to journalists will link them more closely to their readers

Siceloff began translating the newspaper's editorial product to the Internet as online editor in 1994. He also helped produce the Nando Times, a pioneering round-the-clock news service launched on the World Wide Web in late 1994 by Nando.net, a new-media offshoot of the N&O.

Since August 1995, he has been new media editor, supervising production of the online edition of the daily paper (http://www.nando. net/nao/) and of GO: the Triangle Guide Online (http://www.nando.net/nao/go/).

Q. Why did you make the leap from print to electronic journalism?
A. I got into the online end not because I was losing heart in newspapers, but because I like newspapers.

I was inspired by the exciting work my newspaper was doing to make use of technology in computer-assisted reporting, and also by a 1993 Columbia Journalism Review article in which Katherine Fulton articulated the extraordinary potential and challenge of online news.

I see online as a natural extension of what good local newspapers do for their communities. Online, they can do some things better. One of the images that Fulton mentioned was to serve as a community front porch.

It's a fundamental opportunity to have a different relationship with our customers, to have two-way conversations and let them talk back to us.

Q. Describe a typical day in the newsroom of the online edition of the News & Observer.
A. Right now for the online edition, we're 95 percent dependent on what the staff has under way for the print edition. After the print editors have set the front page and section front decisions on story play, we begin second-guessing them for the online edition. We might shift the lineup around somewhat to account for some things such as quality of display photos. The big lead story might not have a good photo.

We have to get a copy of each story out of our computer system after it has been edited for the print edition, get rid of all the coding, then reformat to fit the particular needs of the programs we use to produce our Web edition.

We also take this opportunity to enhance as many stories as we can with material not available in the print edition. That is the most satisfying part of the routine and the part where we add the most value.

For example, in today's business section, there's a story about a new photography product called Advanced Photo System that's developed by several manufacturers including Kodak and Fuji. So in the Web edition, right along with our reporter's story, we have links to the Kodak Web site and the Fuji Web site where readers can read what the company has to say about this new technology and their new products.

We have a feature today about the restoration work of the old Senate chamber of the State Capitol Building. As it was a historic feature, I inserted a link from a chapter of the "Bicentennial History of Raleigh" about the construction of the beautiful capitol building in 1840.

The hands-on night editor spends the evening processing 40 to 60 stories and a half-dozen photos and waits until the last local news and sports stories are in - generally after midnight. The editor sends the stories to the Web server and then activates the automated program that takes the stories and builds tomorrow's Web edition with them.

Q. What types of stories get the most hits?
A. This being a big college basketball town, some of our most heavily read stories have to do with college sports, players going pro, old coaches going and new coaches coming.

Each week we get stats on how many times every single file was requested in the preceding week. Some of our most heavily read sports stories were read 600 to 800 times.

The day after Election Day in May, when we reported the results of the primary, the most-read story was not about Harvey Gantt winning the Democratic nomination to run against Jesse Helms again. It was about University of North Carolina point guard Jeff McInnis deciding to go pro.

Q. When somebody asks what your circulation is, how do you respond?
A. Well, we don't know how many people read us. But the front page is getting about 1,500 hits a day. About 200 times a day people look at the sports section front and the Triangle section front. The number of hits on the home page and on individual stories are growing steadily almost every week.

Q. You're leading an effort to have all reporters, editors and photographers in the newsroom have their own home pages on the Web. Why is that important?
A. One of the handicaps that separates newspapers from some readers is newspapers can be seen as faceless institutions. There are bylines, but not individual identities revealed behind those bylines.

Online, if a reporter's stories come with a link to that reporter's home page, which has a biographical sketch of the reporter and a photograph, we have a chance to break the ice, to open two-way communication and to establish new relationships between us and our readers. It's a small thing, but it humanizes the newspaper.

Another reason is to engage our staff members in our online product. Our metro columnists have been soliciting e-mail feedback for a while. So they're generally more engaged with online readers.

Q. How much feedback do you get from online readers?
A. We get e-mail every day. We have feedback buttons on almost every page. We get requests or questions or compliments or criticisms, sometimes commenting directly on the news. These we are forwarding to the editors and reporters working on the stories.

Q. Besides the online edition of the paper, you also oversee a kind of electronic insider's guide to the Raleigh area.
A. Online is a great medium for a guide to the community. The kind of things that people want to know about the community are always changing - from who is the mayor of Cary to which restaurants have opened and closed to which bands are playing in a nightclub next week.

It was an obvious way to get better use of restaurant reviews, for example, because you can archive them. And you also can let users write their own reviews, which they enjoy doing.

Another emphasis is to meet the needs of people who are new to the town. They can find information about 20 towns in the Triangle - what schools a child would attend based on the street address, about child care centers and recreation opportunities, and more.

We're just getting started.