While Web publishing offers tantalizing possibilities, your reputation is paramount; retain it by tackling hard ethical questions now, before they're so sticky

At the online newspaper conferences, the topics are pretty much the same: technology breakthroughs, advertising models, marketing tips, cool interactive content. Everything except journalism and the values behind it.

Maybe there's no need to talk about ethics and values. It's probably a no-brainer: if you're an online journalist, you're still a journalist. The same sensibilities apply.

But do they? And are you the same journalist with a mouse that you were with a pica pole? See what you think about the next four questions:

What are you trying to prove by going online?

Your newspaper is probably online for the same reason the others are: they are afraid not to be. No one really knows if there is big money to be made on the Internet. No one can say for sure that being online will build circulation for the paper. (Indeed, it might even cost ink-on-paper circulation.)

Maybe being online is preparing your company for the future. But just maybe it's like investing in eight-track stereo ... or Earthshoes.

The only real reason to be out there today is to protect your franchise.

Now that you are in charge of this new, exciting online venture, are you sure what your goals are?

Do you want to be another distribution channel for the newspaper, or do you want to be more than that?

Do you know who your target audience is? Who your advertisers might be?

Are you a free service, or will you charge for your content?

Does your online image reflect the image of your paper: responsible, authoritative, trustworthy? Or are you trying to be a tad cooler with your online version? Can you be both authoritative and cool? (Your parents couldn't.)

Are you expected to be a profit center, or are you a value-added service that can lose some dollars while making the larger company look more appealing to advertisers and readers?

Once you answer these questions, think about how journalistic values and ethics fit in. Are these goals - of presenting information with balance, fairness, wholeness, accuracy, authenticity, credibility and strong news judgment - relevant for this new world?

How important are journalistic ethics now that you're a business person?

Just as a newspaper has to establish a new identity on the Internet, so too does the manager of that project. For most of us, it means leaving a secure career in the newsroom for the unknown world of the entrepreneur.

All of a sudden, you are a businessman or woman, worrying about advertising rates, subscriber revenue, bandwidth and marketing. You don't have the resources to keep up with everyone else on the Web, though former newsroom colleagues tell you in the cafeteria that you represent the company's future.

Who's got time to think of values - or journalism for that matter? You've got a business to run, dammit.

But say that you do get a chance to reflect on the values and ethics that served you as a reporter and editor:

How do they relate to what you're doing now?

Do you have the same commitment to them outside the newsroom?

Is your news judgment affected by your closer relationship with advertisers and your marching orders to make a profit? Running a negative story about an advertiser used to be the publisher's problem. Are you really going to play up that piece that makes the local Realtor look bad when he represents 50 percent of your advertising?

If you expect to make money, you probably will put ads on your home page. What does that do to your credibility?

When you're trying to compete in an "instant" medium, do you really have time to insist on "journalistic wholeness" and "authenticity"? What is "accuracy" anyway when you're updating your site every eight minutes and can clarify and correct mistakes before most anyone sees them?

Don't you need attitude online? Are you going to be as gray and boring as your newspaper? How do you speak to the hip online generation - and make them love you - when you're hung up on "balance" and "fairness"?

Who's in control?

Online, there are many levels to the debate - each one as cloudy as the next. Who calls the shots - and why - bears on how we do our jobs and which values lose their special status when others set priorities for us.

• Newspapers vs. The Online Audience: Online users are much more involved than newspaper readers. With today's relatively small online populations, each user represents a larger share of audience than does one reader to the newspaper. Plus, online users demand - and get - a host of interactive services, from chat rooms to consumer purchases to interactive games and puzzles.

  Those who read the news online are often given many paths and sidebar-type detours to choose from. With all this power in the hands of the customer, how can a newspaper online exert leadership?

• Newspapers vs. Their Corporate Parents: Given the high cost of staffing and dealing with new technology, plus the uncertain future of publishing on the Internet, newspaper groups are trying to hold down costs and standardize purchases. Some are building content networks and making group purchases of outside content. Does meeting corporate expectations jeopardize the quality of our journalism - or the values behind it?

• Newspapers vs. The Barbarians: Microsoft. America Online. AT&T. The cable companies. The competition online is unlike anything newspaper companies have seen in generations. If ever. Newspaper groups are banding together with CareerPath and New Century Network and other industry creations.

  They may save the classified markets, but are they good for the values of journalism? Are our users and our communities best served when newspapers circle the wagons?

Where are the boundaries?

• Presumably, you'd protect the privacy of a rape victim, just as you would in print. In an interactive medium, you might create a forum or chat session on date rape. That helps focus the community debate. But your attorney says you'd better not moderate or censor those forums because it leaves you open to legal problems. And some bozos are writing some pretty nasty stuff about the date rape victim in your forum. What to do?

• You've developed a great popular music page on your Web site. To increase diversity and unpredictability, you link to the home page of a 13-year-old girl who has built a Web site listing her favorite new music. Her list includes a link to a rap music bulletin board featuring lyrics that would instantly put your newspaper editor into a coma. The girl has already been covered in her junior high school newspaper and wants to know why you want to break the link. So does her principal - who accuses you of racism. What's your call?

• You are a journalist - a serious journalist. You believe that your Internet site ought to reflect the separation of news and advertising. Then an advertiser asks you to create an interactive game based on the news of the day and put it at the top of your home page. To enter and win prizes, the user has to download something from the advertiser's web site. Oh yes, and the advertiser promises to pay half of your monthly advertising revenue goal.

We all have standards, but shouldn't we be a little flexible in this new world? Besides, where's the line between editorial content and sponsored entertainment anyway?

They may not be as cutting-edge or easy to discuss as business models or bandwidth problems, but journalism values deserve to be front and center in every discussion of the new media. For the medium may be new, but the ethical dilemmas stubbornly stay the same.

Mann is general manager of Philadelphia Online.