Dilemma: Column due 9am, London. Now 12am, Pittsburgh. Spent last two hours crawling the Web. No words written. Panic.
Solution: Turn liability into asset. Write column on finding specific information on the Web, and give it an IR slant.
We’ve all read too much about the World Wide Web. Next to OJ, nothing has been more over-analysed. And every media tycoon, from Rupert on down, is banking their futures there. If only it could bump Charles and Diana off the front pages once and for all.
And there’s no shortage of unqualified but nevertheless professional soothsayers – I confess to be included among that group – who believe that the Web will redefine just about every aspect of communications and information sharing.
But what if you actually wanted to find some real-life business insight – not just raw data or sponsored messages – through the Web? Specifically, let’s say you wanted to research the duelling sides in Washington’s drawn out hoopla over reform of shareholder litigation. As reported in our last issue, the US Senate and House of Representatives voted in December to override President Clinton’s veto of the Republican-inspired measure to make the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 law.
So now we want to find out what the players actually had to say. First stop – and yes, this is shameless self-promotion – look up this magazine’s very own Web site which purports to be ‘all things IR.’
Among the bounties of info treasures available through our site is a link to Niri’s Web site. One of the beauties of the Web, of course, is its ability to have one site linked to another, from where you can go to another, and another, until you too find that it’s 12.30 am and not a word has been written.
So the mouse is clicked, and off we go to Niri’s onscreen service. Bingo, me thinks: there’s an item highlighting Niri’s lobbying efforts on behalf of the forces of good and light.
But disappointment sets in. As of this mid-February prowling, the most recent news about shareholder litigation on Niri’s Web service is dated December 6, 1995, weeks before the Congress veto override.
Meanwhile, Niri had put out a late-December news release the old-fashioned way (in the mail). For this techno-buff, an uneasy feeling settles. Perhaps this Web stuff really is much ado about nothing.
Surely someone out there has been discussing this important topic. So clicked over to the DejaNews service, a powerful search engine that indexes the non-stop chatter among the thousands of Newsgroups scattered across the Internet’s Usenet region. After the ads DejaNews throws up tonight’s offering: Britannica Online, access search menu and type in ‘shareholder litigation.’
Wait a minute, and then: Glory, Glory, Glory.
DejaNews tells me it found no less than 3,959 separate postings relevant to my search terms. Wow. Finally. Eureka.
Or is it? On closer inspection, many of those messages are not really about shareholder litigation at all. DejaNews looks for ‘shareholder’ and ‘litigation’ as separate items.
Now it is 1.30 am and, to paraphrase Bono, I still haven’t found what I’m looking for. Time to apply some intuition. Newt Gingrich, Speaker of the US House, promised shareholder litigation reform as part of the Republicans’ Contract With America.
Perhaps the Republicans have something on the Web to triumph their veto override. But what’s their onscreen address?
Access Alta Vista, the powerful new search engine operated by Digital Computers, offering a super-fast scan of millions of home pages and documents attached to them. After some frustration with my browser – my God, its 1.50 am – I find the Republican Party page.
Indeed, they do have something of a report card on the Contract With America. Among the items is a short blurb on ‘Common Sense Legal Reform.’
But still no juice here. Thought crosses mind: How about all those Republicans frantically running around looking for Primary votes?
Remember that National Press Club, in Washington DC, has a great Web service designed to be a launching pad for journalists. Go there.
Now am truly kid in candy store. If you love politics, you’ll love the Club’s collection of up-to-the-microsecond political reference points. Decide to start with hero-du-jour Steve ‘Flat Tax’ Forbes, my personal favourite of the candidates.
Lots of great stuff about the flat tax idea but not a word about shareholder litigation.
And now it’s 2.00 am. Am afraid will wake up baby who will wake up spouse, who will see light on, and come in to question my strange work habits, and to mumble something about getting a real job.
Back to Alta Vista. Will try direct approach. Type in ‘shareholder litigation.’ In seconds, am told there are some 6,000 matching terms scattered across the Web. Great. Just what I need at 3.10 am: Information overload. I’m dying.
Just a glimpse at some of the titles. Some professors in upstate New York offer a thoughtful piece on avoiding shareholder suits for Nasdaq-listed companies. But, alas, it too was written before the Congressional override. Scan a number of pages sponsored by some leftist-sounding groups, prattling on about corporate greed and the little guys.
By now, eyes blurred. Head pounds. Body begs: Put me to bed. Suddenly, a clear vision appears somewhere in the frontal lobes. Perhaps the Web is not really the place to go looking for the serendipity of an uncharted quest for news. Perhaps there is something to the survey of 320 senior British corporate managers, sponsored recently by Sony and the International Visual Communications Association (IVCA), according to which only 35 per cent of respondents said they thought that the Internet was a ‘useful’ tool in the office.
Most thought that the Internet is proving, at least in these early days of the Web’s development, counter-productive, with employees spending hours wandering like Don Quixote and his windmills.
‘The information technology industry continues to rave about the success of the Internet in revolutionising business and personal communications. However, the reality is very different …’surfing the net’ may be responsible for decreasing overall productivity,’ an official of IVCA says.
Perhaps new is not always better. Exit out of Web. Switch over to DataTimes online service, the $39-a-month, non-Internet proprietary network with which your columnist has a business relationship.
DataTimes operates its EyeQ online service (soon to be launched in Europe as News EyeQ), which along with the other big business online networks (Dialog, Dow Jones News/Retrieval, Lexis/Nexis and others) represent the older, more coherent, if decidedly less sexy, end of the cyber world.
Log on to EyeQ. Call up search menu. Type in ‘shareholder litigation’ and narrow search to 1996 only. Wait 45 seconds. Up come the headlines of 170 stories, from major daily newspapers to trade newsletters to press releases.
Within three minutes have read and downloaded five full-text stories. These include a great report from the Orange County (CA) Register about the local Republicans in that high-tech, high-lawsuit belt fired up from the shareholder litigation victory, now seeking to extend its provision to California laws.
Total charge for searching and downloading stories: $21, plus that month’s subscription fee. Total elapsed time: Less than ten minutes. On the other big business services, the results would have been about the same. Apparently, money still buys good things.
Outside, meanwhile, the sun is peeking through the early morning Pittsburgh mist. If I had started with EyeQ, or one of its competitors, I might have just now been lumbering awake. As it is, I face the day with a muddled brain and, no doubt, London calling with an irate voice. The moral of this tale: No matter what happens as the Murdochs and Gates’s seek to tame the Web, there has to be cyber- life beyond the Internet. I need the sleep.
