| Advice for prospective online editors
Author: Bruce Siceloff
Published: September 29, 1996
Last Updated: October 01, 1996
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So, you want to get into the online end of the newspaper business? This is a scarcely charted realm, so there's still a market for pioneers.
First, immerse yourself in the Internet. Surf the World Wide Web to appreciate the myriad brilliant and goofy, helpful and useless, big and little things generated out there by kids and by corporations (including a few hundred newspapers). Remember that the Internet is deeper than just the heavily hyped Web, though: Simple e-mail is a solid medium for communicating one-to-one or one-to-many. And you'll find a multiplicity of communication modes including Usenet newsgroups, e-mail message lists, and a variety of Web-based forums and chat rooms. Online newspapers and their readers are using these in lots of ways.
Don't waste time reading magazines about all this stuff; the Internet is a participatory sport. See for yourself how some aspects of the old medium work especially well in the new - and others do not work at all. Start seeing how the Internet offers newspapers the chance to build dynamic new relationships with their customers and their communities.
When you come up for air, you may decide that the Net really isn't fun and isn't worth the effort. If so, stop here; the newspaper business still has plenty of use for old-media specialists. I mention this because if you aren't hooked, you won't be successful as an online editor.
But if you're still with me, and you've started thinking creatively and journalistically in this new medium, there are a few things you'll want to bring with you.
First, just about all of the strengths of a newspaper editor are still important in the online realm. (There are old habits to unlearn, but that's a topic for another day.) Don't count on becoming a specialist, though; most online jobs require versatility. A good online news editor:
- Is a writer and designer.
- Knows how to use photos and graphics, and how to process them.
- Is an expert on the local community, with all its history, its needs, its quirks and its resources.
- Stays plugged into the rest of the newspaper operation: circulation, production and advertising, and the people who work in these departments.
- Has plenty of research skills, and knows where to find the appropriate information resources that can enhance the online edition.
Beyond this, you'll need of course to become expert in online tools and technology, primarily HTML (hypertext markup language), which turns text pages into Web pages. (To see what HTML tags were used to create any page you're looking at on your Netscape or other Web browser, click the "View Source" option. Anything enclosed in an is an HTML tag. Before every chain store sold HTML books, "View Source" was how a lot of us learned HTML.)
Computer programming is one skill in great demand for online newspapers. Even if your college degree was in liberal arts, you can take a course or two. When you offer yourself to the online world and your resume mentions proficiency in a programming language such as Perl or C++ or Java, you'll get noticed.
Finally, as you learn HTML and Photoshop and Java, don't wait for someone to hire you in order to put these skills to work. You've heard it said that anyone can become a publisher on the World Wide Web, and that includes you. The best way to develop and showcase your new talents is to build your own home page, or home pages for your friends.
In fact, your home page can even include your own online newspaper. 
Rawlins is a reporter for the Raleigh (N.C.) News & Observer.
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