“     Not many people remember it now, but the Atlanta Journal-Constitution was one of the leading pioneers of the early Internet age. It was the first newspaper on the Prodigy Internet service — one of America Online’s two main competitors back in the early 1990s — and within 90 days of launching its Access Atlanta service, it had twice as many online subscribers, 15,000, as any other newspaper in the country. Eight months after launch, Neil McManus wrote in the magazine Digital Media that all other newspapers interested in pursuing a digital strategy should visit Access Atlanta “with notebook in hand.”

But that was the apex. Prodigy’s membership stopped growing, crushed by the less staid and more freewheeling America Online, and within a year and a half the AJC was forced to end its association with Prodigy, turning to the web later than many other large newspapers. Because the company viewed the digital strategy as a supplement to the print product rather than an eventual replacement, the paper did not see the web as an impetus to change its print-based business model. In short order, the pioneers became also-rans.

Obviously, the Journal-Constitution bet on the wrong horse — and, in this case, the wrong technological platform, since after AOL drove Prodigy and Compuserve out of business, the World Wide Web rendered AOL’s proprietary service irrelevant. But it’s hard to fault the Journal-Constitution for failing to predict the future correctly. After all, nearly every newspaper failed in that. Even though the AJC guessed wrong on the answers, its management and editorial staff asked a lot of the right questions. And they placed a decent-sized bet on their guess.” continue reading | Nieman Journalism Lab