For example, they are finding that an electronic editor must segment readers and sometimes depart from the traditional approach to newspaper journalism.

In addition, the services are growing up. Newspaper online services are approaching a new competitive phase that will paradoxically require them to:

• Have their own organization, independent of the newspaper
• Have a close relationship with the newspaper in order to produce particular news-related services.

Most newspaper editors understand the groups and sub-groups who make up the sprawling newspaper readership - in short, they know a little about a lot. And although this fact makes them good dinner companions, they may be bad Web masters.

For example, newspapers have a sports section in which they cover major and a few minor sports. The Yahoo! Internet directory, however, lists 104 categories of sports Web sites.

A traditional category, such as basketball, lists 1,153 different sites. A mid-sized category, auto racing, lists 450 sites.

In addition, however, there are hundreds of sites in what are - from a newspaper perspective - "specialized" categories ranging from equestrian (169 sites) to martial arts (265 sites).

Of course, some categories such as baton twirling (1 site) may be too narrow to support commercial Web sites in the foreseeable future.

Thus far, meager revenues have prevented small services from making money, but Internet advertising revenues will increase - from less than $100 million in 1996 to $2.5 billion - $5 billion in 2000.

In addition, advertisers will learn to communicate directly with targeted electronic audiences and readers will gain the confidence to conduct transactions. As a result, niche services will eventually be viable at circulation levels too low to sustain a print magazine or newspaper. And some of those services will attract audiences traditionally served by the newspaper.

Newspaper editors occasionally cover such niches, of course, but usually from an "objective" or mass audience perspective that assumes readers may know little about the subject.

A story about people who shuffleboard every weekend is different than a story for the people who shuffleboard every weekend.

And electronic readers perceive a sense of "community" only if the service's voice is "one of us" rather than reportorial.

The reader's sense of a one-on-one experience and intimacy is reinforced by his exposure to informal language and the opportunity to communicate through e-mail and bulletin boards.

In contrast, metro newspaper sites with their authoritative, objective voice and high ratio of reportorial to reader-provided information can sound like "preaching" and "arrogance" to readers who often have negative press attitudes.

Newspaper editors, on the other hand, believe that objectivity and an authoritative tone have made newspapers great and will make their Web sites great as well. Newspapers, they point out, have worked for decades to associate those qualities with the newspaper brand.

There will be a need on the Internet for the authoritative, newspaper-related services. Newspapers have the experienced people and skills to draw upon to create those services.

The fact is, however, that much of the newspaper's online business opportunity may lie in providing informal, inclusive, community-of-interest services as well as services based primarily on commercial transactions such as classifieds and home shopping.

Such services may need to exist under their own brand and editorial standards. For example, the dating service may be quite different in tone from the home-buying service and be promoted differently to its own audience. In addition, some services will have more "advertorial" than "editorial" content.

In short, the different reader services now bundled in the newspaper product are likely to become unbundled over time as they eventually deepen into various electronic services with their own editorial missions.

That evolution is virtually assured by the low cost of targeting interactive services at individual consumers and the same economic forces that have caused decades of media fragmentation.

As a result, a traditional newspaper editor may wonder how "journalism" squares with:

• Publishing massive amounts of information that has little to do with "news" or broad public issues.
• Adopting the point of view of the groups being "covered."
• Providing content for services dedicated solely to selling.
• Editing numerous services independent of the newspaper brand, services that may appeal to people who hate newspapers.
• Being so accountable to the interactive reader that a degree of editorial "control" is ceded to the readers themselves.

Their skills - at the highest level - allow them to summarize, select and emphasize "information" in a way that creates meaning to a broad audience.

Those skills will be important for certain kinds of online services, but not for all, and perhaps more importantly, they will be critical to enhancing the printed newspaper with supplemental information.

Finally, they will be essential for the newspaper itself to develop - with its unmatched browsability - a bigger role as a guide and promotional platform for local electronic services.

On the other hand, the time has come for interactive services to have a home in their own organization with their own CEO.

The precedent has been set by radio and television stations that operated out of newspaper newsrooms in infancy but moved on to form independent businesses. The editorial requirements of the new media were found to be far different and competition demanded smaller, focused organizations that were unsubordinated to the agenda of their larger parents.

Newspapers have had their period of online experimentation. Competition for the local interactive marketplace is taking on new virulent form: well-funded, focused local initiatives from America Online, Microsoft, AT&T, telephone companies and start-ups.

Newspaper editors need to honestly assess the ability of their newsrooms to meet such challenges while simultaneously publishing first-class newspapers.

Editors should welcome this organizational evolution as natural. Some will want to work in the new businesses, free from some of the "constraints" of tradition, while others will enjoy the freedom to focus on making the printed newspaper the convenient and authoritative voice that makes sense out of both the real and virtual world.

Whiteside is director of strategy and technology/new media for Cox Enterprises.