Dec. 15, 1996

American Journalism Review This carries an index with links to all radio, tv, newspapers and magazines on line in the United States.

Editor and Publisher This is their news archives on-line and the most current edition.

These are E&Ps picks of the best media outlets. As I've surfed through them, they are very much sticking to their traditional strengths and simply putting them on-line. Some have added gimmicks, such as registering for free tickets to dinners, etc. Others have added interactivity in allowing you to rank the performance of the professional sports team overall, as well as by player. Others have bundled in activities that turns them into your Web service provider. Basically, though, this is still emerging for the media.

Los Angeles Times because of "Hunter," which allows you to create a personalized version of the Times.
Washington Post because of terrific layout, with fast loading graphics.
Washington Times because of content and navigation bars, as well as indexing to top political WWW sites.
Sacramento Bee Fun, informative, colorful, graphic intensive but loads quickly. Win tickets to movies, etc.
Houston Chronicle Interactive Houston Chronicle Interactive where you can listen to NASA shuttle missions live, including archives of past missions.
Michigan Press Photographers Association a Netscape Hotsite, it features award-winning photos, sound clips and video interviews.
Boston Globe Considered by E&P to be one of the best newspaper web sites in the country.

Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel They began as an on-line publication catering to Packers and Badgers fans. In the last half year they have began to expand their offerings. Even so, they were averaging 2 million hits a week just on the sports teams. P.S. Check out the restaurants on-line, including their best recipes. For those not familiar with Milwaukee, check out Mader's. It's one of the best German restaurants in the nation.

Chicago Tribune They have made some really interesting use of Web technology, particularly in their packages on surrounding communities, like Evanston and Arlington Heights, both affluent suburbs. You'll note that by making good use of frames and targets within the pages you can open up to additional information in a separate window without leaving the Chicago Tribune homepage. They give you more information without losing you as a client.

Kansas City Star UW-RF works quite a bit with the Star's sports staff because of their coverage of the Kansas City Chiefs Summer Training Camp here. Their operation is typical: the staff was provided the additional responsibility of providing services unique to the Web, such as chat rooms.

Pioneer Press The St. Paul Pioneer Press is a member of Knight-Ridder. They have been aggressive in doing on-line value added services, such as creating "hot site" links from the paper to web sites in their circulation area. Also, they provide an electronic version on -line and Web services.

Pathfinder This is the Time-Life site for all of their publications. You can subscribe to a listserv that will send you a weekly e-mail message highlighting all their magazines.

Here are some sites for Public Relations practitioners:

Yahoo PR firms home pages listing: http://www.yahoo.com/Business_and_Economy/Companies/Corporate_Services/Public_Relations/

Public Relations Society of America

International Association of Business Communicators