ABSTRACT
Electronic newspapers have been available in some form since the early 1970s, with the first Web-based newspapers launched in the mid-1990s (Gunter, 2003). In the United States, the Casper, Wyoming, Star-Tribune launched an ISP and Web-based newspaper (called the Electronic Signpost) in April 1994, just before the first version of Netscape Navigator 1.0 was released. The Electronic Telegraph, the online edition of the British The Daily Telegraph, produced its first Web edition in late 1994 (Gunter, 2003). Six months later, in May 1995, Quill reported that 150 papers worldwide had Web editions (Cochran, 1995), with newspapers in Barcelona; Singapore; Sydney; Chicago; Raleigh, North Carolina; and San Jose, California, all providing Web-based news. The New York Times started its Web edition in early 1996, as did The Times of London (Gunther, 2003) and Le Monde, France’s largest daily newspaper (Carlson, 2003). In April 1996, the National Newspaper Association reported that 175 North American dailies were online; 775 publications were online worldwide (Carlson, 2003). One year later, nearly 1,600 newspapers were being published online, including 820 in the United States (Levins, 1997). A review of three online newspaper directories (American Journalism Review, NewsLink, and https://NewsDirectory.com" xmlns:xlink="https://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">NewsDirectory.com) placed the population of daily online U.S. newspapers at 1,279 by mid-2003.
