AN INTERVIEW WITH WENDY WOODS, EDITOR OF NEWSBYTES
by Hank Mishkoff


This two-part interview with Wendy Woods, originator and editor
of Newsbytes, was conducted in Parti on The Source in late May
and early June 1986.

Newsbytes is a weekly electronic newsletter that offers "byte-
size" chunks of timely information about the microcomputer
industry worldwide. Wendy initiated Newsbytes three years ago as
a "user-publishing" feature on The Source (user-publishers
receive royalties based on the size of their readership).
Newsbytes is the first user-publishing effort to become a
regular "information provider" feature of The Source; you can
read a new issue every Saturday evening by entering NEWSBYTES at
Source command level. You can reach Wendy through Newsbytes or
as IP1039 on The Source (SourceMail or Parti) or WADLEMAN on MCI
Mail.

In three years, Newsbytes has grown from a one-woman show to an
extensive news-gathering operation with five bureaus in the
United States (Silicon Valley, Los Angeles, Southeast,
Northeast, and Washington) and three foreign bureaus (Canada,
United Kingdom, and Japan). Just prior to this interview,
Newsbytes received an award at COMDEX in Atlanta; I began the
interview by asking Wendy about that award.

* * * * *

WW: The award was "Best Online Publication" from the Computer
Press Association (CPA). Newsbytes was one of 500 entries in 17
categories, I'm told. This was the first annual CPA awards
ceremony. Interestingly enough, Newsbytes was also the first to
adopt the CPA "Code of Professional Standards," a 12-point
compilation of newsperson ethics drawn up by the CPA last year.

Six of our eight bureaus are headed by CPA members; I urge all
the bureau chiefs to join the CPA. The CPA currently has 130
active members, is an organization devoted to the exchange of
information and clarification of issues involving the computer
press, and has a private network on The Source. The CPA
executive board has nominated me to be president of the CPA;
apparently I'm running unchallenged! (That should be very
interesting--me, nine months pregnant, being sworn in as CPA
president!) [Wendy is expecting her first child later this
summer--Ed.]


Q: When did you start Newsbytes, and why?

WW: Newsbytes was started in May, 1983 on The Source as a user-
publishing feature. I began it for two reasons: I wanted to
reduce my Source bills, which were mounting up at the rate of
$400 a month, and I saw a need for a computer newsweekly. Since
I was a technology reporter at KGO-TV in San Francisco at the
time--newly fascinated by electronic media and desperately
searching for an online computer industry equivalent of
Associated Press or UPI--I found the only way to get a summary
of the news I wanted was to write it myself.

Newsbytes was conceived as a reporter's "tip sheet" (or an
assignment editor's "poop sheet") which lists not only a story
synopsis but contact names and phone numbers. That was the
target audience: reporters. But the "insider" style was, to my
surprise, very popular with computer enthusiasts in general, not
just reporters!


Q: When you started Newsbytes, why did you use The Source? Did
you investigate any computer conferencing options (like Parti on
The Source)?

WW: I chose The Source because it PAID user-publishers. At the
time (1983) the only other service which paid royalties for
publications without a track record was Delphi, but its
readership was so low that it didn't seem worthwhile. Having
been using The Source for several months prior to launching
Newsbytes was, of course, also to my advantage, as I was
familiar with the system. I did not investigate conferencing
because there was no system for remuneration.


Q: If a computer conferencing system were structured so that
there COULD be some remuneration, would you consider using it
for Newsbytes?

WW: Sure, if a conferencing system allowed for payment to the
authors, we'd love to participate (no pun intended). Especially
adaptable would be our letters to the editor and editorial
feedback sections. As it is, readers must wait a week to see
their responses in print, and consequently our current medium is
not as interactive as we'd like it to be.


Q: When you started Newsbytes, you were the sole reporter. How
did you gather all that information?

WW: When I started Newsbytes, I gathered the information mostly
from other periodicals and magazines. I would collect two to
five stories on any one subject and boil them down to a
paragraph or two for the weekly summary. We still do this to a
certain extent; but now my (our) news gathering includes press
releases, personal contacts, tips from sources and readers, and
miscellaneous other methods.

It was a big job for me at the beginning, which is why it is now
so much easier with a total of eight bureaus. I no longer have
to report everything that's going on in the world! I can confine
myself to the Silicon Valley area and depend on the other
correspondents to cover their territories.

----

Q: Can you describe the process of gathering information for a
typical Newsbytes issue?

WW: The newsweekly is put together in one way or another through
the week. I normally receive 10-20 calls from various sources
inside the industry, PR people, and friends who have heard of
stories. I spend several hours a week tracking them down. At
least once a week I attend a press conference or go to lunch
with someone in the industry to have an insider chat, as well as
take care of the business end of Newsbytes (Being the publisher,
editor AND writer consumes a lot of time!).

Throughout the week, some 20 computer news magazines and
newsletters arrive, which I read, in addition to six daily
newspapers. If need be, I will post daily bulletins on
Newsbytes. Toward the end of the week, my office desk looks like
a tornado has hit it. It is covered with clippings and notes.
Saturday morning, after I've edited all the contributing
editors' work, I sit down to write my own column. By Saturday
evening, it's done. Monday morning I start all over again.


Q: Where is Newsbytes currently appearing other than on The
Source?

WW: In its entirety, it appears ONLY on The Source. Various
columns are in print in such magazines as Computer Currents (San
Francisco Bay Area) and I/O magazine (Japan). Bits & Bytes, New
Zealand's largest computer magazine, begins publishing excerpts
from Newsbytes in July. We are currently negotiating with other
magazines and online systems to publish Newsbytes. In addition,
Newsbytes appears on some 20 private bulletin board systems,
most of them in the U.S. Newsbytes is available on a limited
basis, via subscription, for reposting to local BBS's.


Q: Currently, what is your motivation for doing Newsbytes?

WW: It's fun and challenging. I enjoy being an entrepreneur,
breaking new ground, building a news organization. I see
Newsbytes growing: we have very good writers, and we have new
markets opening up to us all the time. Eventually we hope to
become a wire service with at least some of the scope and status
of UPI or AP with specific emphasis on technology news.


Q: Are you making enough money to live on?

WW: No, we are not making enough money to live on. I earn a
modest salary as editor and publisher, but the other
correspondents receive a monthly amount that they could not live
on. We hope to change that soon. Our goal for the next year is
to triple Newsbytes' revenues. Check back next year. I am
supporting myself mainly through television reporting; the
others have outside jobs as well.


Q: What kind of computer equipment do you use to create
Newsbytes?

WW: "Newsbytes Central" is equipped with an ancient Apple IIe
with two floppy disk drives, 128K RAM, a Hayes 1200-baud modem,
a C. Itoh dot-matrix printer, Applewriter software, and ASCII
Express Professional software. Not state-of-the-art, but that's
the workhorse of the operation. We occasionally receive review
machines that are here for a few months, and we welcome them!


Q: Have you ever "scooped" the rest of the press? That is, has
your network of sources ever enabled you to be the first
journalist to get a particularly hot story out?

WW: Yes, we OFTEN scoop the competition. In nearly every edition
there's an exclusive story from at least one of the
correspondents. We broke the Morrow bankruptcy, most recently.
Also look for a breaking story this weekend regarding Apple;
I'll have it first. [The issue of Newsbytes that appeared on The
Source on June 14 contained an exclusive story about an upcoming
and unannounced Macintosh "road-show" promotion planned by
Apple.--Ed.]

Unfortunately, when we DO break stories, the computer press in
general does not attribute the story to us. In a way, it's our
own fault: unless we get it from at least two unnamed sources,
we print the name and phone number of the contact who gave us
the story. That leaves the door open for the rest of the media
to pursue it as if they got it first.

It's often frustrating, because so few people are aware of our
existence. We are fairly well known among computer journalists;
but outside the field, in the general user and buyer audience,
we are not.

But that will change!


Q: If everything moves along in accordance with your WILDEST
hopes and dreams, how do you envision the Newsbytes operation
five years from now?

WW: In five years, we hope to be producing a daily newswire
supplying several online systems as well as computer magazines
worldwide. Beyond that, who knows? A laser printed edition? An
interactive-text-and-pictures medium? Back stories stored on
laserdisk? All of these sound remote right now, but may not one
year from now. It all depends on the industry itself, and on our
competition; if, for example, Ziff-Davis comes in and backs a
small start-up that does what we do, we are out of luck. We
could not hope to compete with a better-financed organization.

But then, our advantage has always been our size. We're small,
we're dynamic, we're open to change--and we're fast on our feet.
For the moment we can live with this "underground" status,
although we can't live ON it. The writers have been
participating in Newsbytes for love of the medium, and with
faith in its future.

Our challenge will now be to make it into a business that makes
money!

We've got the product, we're getting our market, we're slowly
being recognized. We all realize the difficulty ahead of us, but
we're not worried. Newsbytes has survived three years, graduated
from user-publishing to an information-provider feature of The
Source, reached a potential audience of 300,000 (when you
include the Japanese I/O readership), and shows no signs of
losing steam.

As I said, let's see what happens a year from now!