Copyright 1999 Joe Shea. All Rights Reserved.

This decision unravels the fabric of the final veil that newspaper executives who refused to touch it have woven over the Internet with their no-profit-to-be-made complaints.

This timely news confirms what many have been saying: In 1999, the Internet came into its own and shook off the albatross of being the latest electronic fad.

Editors who don't get it now are like loyalist farmers at Valley Forge who refused colonial scrip and missed the revolution.

Few now recall that back in November, 1997, Massachusetts Superior Court Judge Hiller B. Zobel made the choice to release his ruling via the Internet in the infamous "au pair" case in which a young British nanny was convicted of murder by a Boston jury in the death of an 8-month-old in her care.

Judge Zobel reduced the nanny's charge from murder to manslaughter and cut her sentence from life imprisonment to the 8 months she had already served. It was headline news.

The lesser headline, but perhaps the more significant news, came from Zobel's choice to release his ruling to the press via e-mail to be posted on the Web sites of the Associated Press and of Lawyer's Weekly.

Although there were some glitches in Zobel's release, his choice and the consequent posting of his ruling on the Web allowed digital journalism to drive a wedge into the accepted methods of informing the public.

A year later, Congress voted to release via the Web the report of independent counsel Kenneth Starr's investigation of the President.

At that time, Terence Smith, media correspondent for PBS's Newshour with Jim Lehrer, said, "When Congress votes tomorrow to release the 445-page document it received from independent counsel Kenneth Starr, it will represent another coming of age of the Internet."

To be sure, the Starr Report -- whether one judges its pages to be sacred, superficial or scatological -- demonstrated the power of the Internet. Reporters noted half-jokingly that the government almost shut down on the day the report was released because so many federal employees went online to peek at the document that helped indict the President of the United States and led to his impeachment.

Despite Judge Zobel's convictions and Congress's use of the Internet to disseminate the Starr Report, not all were convinced the New Media had become a key player in the world of news and information.

The Associated Press, in fact, was among the key detractors when Judge Zobel announced his decision to release his ruling over the Internet. AP's major argument at the time was that the Internet was "not reliable."

Less than two years later, with its own Internet news operation, "The Wire," fully functional, AP stands among the true believers and is moving increasingly toward serving its members by providing news online instead of with direct feeds.

AP is phasing out its Leafdesk photo operations and sending members and clients to special Web sites where photos and graphics may be downloaded.

Such turnabout notwithstanding, the last argument for those newspaper editors who chose to disdain the Internet lay in the area of commerce.

The argument that the Internet could not make money diminishes as so-called dot-com stocks threaten to transform the stock market; as classified advertising dramatically shifts from the printed page to online postings; as commercial transactions become more secure via the Internet; and as non-newspaper organizations such as CNN and MSNBC aggressively hog lanes of the information highway.

A survey published last month in mediainfo.com, the journal of online news affiliated with the newspaper trade magazine Editor & Publisher, paints the bad news for the belated awakening of newspaper editors.

The survey of audience draw by Web sites in nine major U.S. cities shows that in five of the nine (Dallas/Ft. Worth; Los Angeles; New York; Philadelphia; and Seattle/Tacoma) MSNBC and CNN outdraw the Web site of the city's daily newspaper. Only in Atlanta, Boston, Chicago and Washington, D.C., do the newspaper Web sites hold an edge.

National average results of the survey indicate that only two newspaper Web sites, those of the Washington Post and USA Today, are among the top ten in drawing audiences to the Internet.

As it becomes clearer there is profit to be made on the Internet, it also becomes clearer that newspapers are well behind in penetrating this market.

There are few excuses left for newspaper executives who disdain the Internet. The year 1999 may prove to be their last opportunity to get in favorable position for profits from Internet news sites.

Perhaps the best advice for newspaper managers comes from Steve Yelvington, who this month leaves his job as editor of Minneapolis's startribune.com to become editor of Cox Interactive Media in Atlanta.

Yelvington told Martha L. Stone, a contributing editor for mediainfo.com, that newspaper managers "need to abandon the arrogance that comes from old-media success." He added that decision makers at newspapers must "overcome a culture of caution and defensiveness . . . learn to take risks, make errors, and change their plans on the fly."

Perhaps Merrill Lynch's decision will influence reticent editors to fully embrace the Internet, something that's barely happened in the wake of urgings by prophets and analysts such as Yelvington.

Allan R. Andrews can be contacted at andrews852@verizon.net

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