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Young Readersthe last couple of media.M.L.: Do you mean broadcastmedia and cable?Coll: You start with radio,then television, then cable television,and each of those mediachanged the way Americansand the world interactedwith news and media. And theycertainly undermined the previousprimacy of newspapers.But each of those media wasnarrower and much less compatiblewith what newspapersdo journalistically. Broadcastnews across television, it’sabout the pictures first of all.Secondly, the delivery systemof television news is really quitenarrow. It’s a small pipe topour information into; it’s whatyou can fit onto a screen overtime. Thus even the best of thenetwork news programs at theheight of the networks’ powerin the mid-60’s were pretty limitedas sources of informationabout what happened in theworld yesterday; only 27 minutesof what a newsreader orscattered correspondentscould voice in that period oftime.By contrast, the Web is infinitein its spatial characteristics.It much more resemblesthe supermarket that a newspaperis. It has no constraintson time or space, yet it has many of theproperties that make a newspaper attractiveas a source of news. It’s continuouslyavailable, it’s easy to update,and so forth. And the Web is not thatexpensive to operate in comparison toa television network. So in some sort ofbig picture sense, I think the Web andnewspapers are more compatible thansome other technologies trying to partnerand win allegiances of audiences.M.L.: That brings me back to theconundrum you face in terms of retainingthe business model that allows youto be a generator of news reporting ina way that you want to be for yourThe Washington Post Sunday section for young readers.current audience.Coll: Right, and that’s at the heart ofthe matter in a sort of medium-runsense because part of the problem whenyou think about the synthesis we’vebeen discussing is what is the scaleultimately of the Web business? Nobodyknows. How much revenue ultimatelywill it generate, and how effectivewill it be in supporting thenewsgathering resources that we’veinherited?We know that the newspaper platform,while eroding in some long-termstructural sense, is very supportive ofthe newsgathering resources and culturethat we’ve built up. So it’smore important in that sensethan the unproven model ofthe Web. On the other hand, ifyou don’t invest in the Weband discover what its potentialis, then you are absolutely foreclosingthe possibility of makingthis transition successfully.In a historical sense, we’rereally very early in this story.It’s only five years since theWeb broke out, and here’s whatwe know: The Web has becomeubiquitous in Americansociety. The rate of take-up isjust astonishing in comparisonto other technologies ofits kind. The rate of penetrationis just huge, and the paceat which that take-up has occurredis mind-boggling. Thereis no way that’s going to reverse.Secondly, we know thatthe audiences that have participatedin this revolutionwant to use this medium fornews. And so they are turningto Web news sources in verylarge numbers. At The WashingtonPost, the total audienceacross all platforms that consumesour journalism hasroughly quintupled in fouryears. That accounts for anenormous new Web audiencethat we’ve attracted. So that’sanother lesson we’ve nowlearned: There is a large audiencethat wants to consumejournalism on the Web, the kind ofjournalism we and other newspapersproduce.Now there’s one other big piece ofthis that we don’t know: What kind ofbusiness model is the Web piece goingto produce by way of scale, and what isthe pace at which that business modelwill emerge? And what are going to bethe limits? Is this going to scale tobasically the size of a radio station, inwhich case over 30 or 40 years it’sgoing to be difficult to support thenewsroom outside my glass window?Or is it going to be the first in a seriesof ways in which news organizationslike ours deliver quality journalism of a18 Nieman Reports / Winter 2003