From the San Francisco Chronicle:
What’s a Yale-educated, certified member of the East Coast media elite doing in California talking uber-tech about the potential, and limitations, of the great electronic future?
“I was working with Tina Brown at the New Yorker in 1993, when the Internet was reaching this amazing corporeal explosion,” said Katrina Heron, sitting casually at a Chez Panisse table as she sought to explain her professional and personal transformation. “Except that it wasn’t reaching New York, which can be one of the most parochial places on earth.
“I said, ‘Here we are, trying to rejuvenate this magazine, and we’ve got this new communications revolution occurring,’ ” she recalled. “I told her we could have a searchable Web site, where we take all of the New Yorker archives, put them online, and people could actually come to buy them from us. I used to spend a lot of time at the New Yorker library, which, just like you would imagine, is this very cramped, small room, filled floor to ceiling with gray metal filing drawers. You’d open them, and inside there would be this beautiful yellowed paper with the works of all these wonderful writers that could become available.”
Brown, understandably preoccupied by the cultural wars being waged within the magazine, as well as its financial misfortunes, said she didn’t have the resources to follow up on the suggestion….
Read the rest of the piece about Heron, Wired, and the fate of the Web here.
So, twelve years on, where are those downloadable, searchable archives? I know a set of CD-ROMs is in the works, but it would be even better online. I know you have a plan, folks. I just want to know what it is. What do you need—cookies, pedicures, daily balloon-grams? Name it; it’s done.
Pointing to the Future: Former Wired editor casts a light on the perils—and promise—of technology [SF Chronicle]
The New Yorker Finally Goes Online [Craig Saila]
For Position Only: The New Yorker’s Dot Bomb [CreativePro. The site is considerably improved since this and the above review, though it could be even better; the tiny illustrations, however, are top-notch.]