MAN BITES WEB

By JOSHUA QUITTNER

When the U.S. fired cruise missiles at Iraq last month, Net users raced for their computers to get the news. At CNN Interactive, traffic tripled in minutes; the site's computers served up more than 18 million pages of info that week--CNN's record. "We went from zero to 60 like that," says the Website's executive producer, Jeff Garrard, snapping his fingers.

Since I make my living online--at Pathfinder, an enterprise that will be working mouse in glove with CNN thanks to the merger of Time Warner with Turner Broadcasting--I thrill to any evidence that people are turning to their information appliance, the PC, when they need news fast. Like spaceships sent out to seek havens for a doomed civilization, mainstream media are trying to colonize cyberspace, but the early returns are mixed and revenue streams narrow. A few daring publishers have begun--apostasy!--billing visitors to their sites. The Wall Street Journal Interactive, for instance, announced last week that it has signed up more than 30,000 paid subscribers.

Until the money flows, however, online media remains a grand experiment that explores how new-media tools can redefine communication--hypertext that links words to stories and information all over the world, for instance, and message boards that flow directly out of daily stories. "The Net is a much freer medium than the traditional press right now, and people are intoxicated by it," says media critic Jon Katz, who writes a column for HotWired's Netizen www.netizen.com) Katz, whose career has included stints at the Philadelphia Inquirer and Boston Globe, says that when he used to finish writing a print story, his job was over. But with the instant and intense reaction of readers posting messages, publishing a story online is just the beginning of the process. Says Katz: "The only thing I can compare it to is being tied to the back of a car and dragged through the street."

While journalists are in the communications business, that communication has been mostly one way: from the top down. Online media is about one person communicating to many--and many communicating back: it's about community building rather than simple "publishing." In his upcoming book, Virtuous Media (Random House, due out in January), Katz argues that traditional media didn't understand that notion when they rushed online. "They ended up throwing billions of dollars away in a culture that's completely alien to them and weakens them," he says. The established media were betting that all roads pointed online; what's more likely is that online media will merely take a place alongside more traditional outlets. Radio didn't disappear when television swept America, after all. Online journalism may well end up as "class" rather than mass media. The Journal has already shown that Net folks will pay for special-interest feeds.

Even Carl Steadman, co-founder of the irreverent online daily Suck www.suck.com) reads the wood-pulp versions of three newspapers every day, despite the fact that each is published verbatim on the Web. "I find it so much more, shall we say, 'couth,' to read them at a cafe over a Frappuccino," Steadman says. "The paper delivers a much more personal experience."

Like many Netniks, Steadman goes online to find alternative media, small start-up 'zines with names like Feed, Salon, Word and Stating the Obvious. "I think the importance of interactivity in online media can't be overstated," says Steadman. "When I can cheerfully scroll past the cyberpundit of the moment's latest expose to the discussion area that features the opinions of true experts like myself and my hometown's own Joe Bob, I'll feel I've finally broken free." My only hope is that he'll be paying for the privilege.