  • Read to the pup

    Chopper listens:

    3:30 p.m. every

    Monday

  • Tech help is here

    Sign up for

    free help

    with your iPad

  • Write a review

    We will post

    it on our site.

    Ask for a form!

  • Family story time!

    Join us at

    10:30 a.m.

    Saturdays!

  • Learn to repair damaged books

    Hear our expert

    conservator:

    10 a.m. Feb. 13

  • Exercise class

    Come in at

    9:30 Tuesdays,

    Thursdays thru May

  • Program for dads

    Discipline vs.

    punishment:

    7:30 p.m. Feb. 8

  • Grownup coloring

    5:30 p.m. Monday,

    Feb. 22, at the library.

    Join us!

  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
  • 6
  • 7
  • 8

Search the Catalog

Librarian Blog

  • Just grow up ...

    I've been out of the daily college millieu for a long, long time so I haven't a clue about the...

  • Polls and problems

    At least 15 years ago, an international society of statisticians published a report about the...

About the presidential elections:
  • Votes: (0%)
  • Votes: (0%)
  • Votes: (0%)
  • Votes: (0%)
  • Votes: (0%)
  • Votes: (0%)
  • Votes: (0%)
  • Votes: (0%)
Total Votes:
First Vote:
Last Vote:
Text Size

I was managing editor of the Wichita Falls newspaper when I first heard about the World Wide Web, although when I heard about it, it wasn't called that.

My copy desk was comprised of tech-savvy people who discovered "bulletin boards," especially one erected by our chief of police.

And they had learned how to use a crude version of e-mail.

They did not exactly let me in on these advances.

Instead, I stumbled into the Internet at a national Associated Press Managing Editors convention in Dallas. One of the sessions was about the Internet, although they did not call it that, and I was completely dumbfounded by what I saw presented.

I would like to say I instantly recognized the impact the Web could have on information technology ... and I did.

I hurried back to Wichita Falls and pulled together my most technologically informed staff members and tasked them with finding out everything they could, with the idea that we would explore how to use the Web to extend the reach of the newspaper, how we could monopolize it to keep our franchise.

Some months later, it appeared that our corporate managers had picked up on the potential, and they decided that all Web-oriented tech advances would be coordinated through them, thus centralizing the process and leaving me and my techies out of the whole thing.

And that's the story of my life with the Web. Corporate headquarters trying to lead innovation, but actually slowing everything down.

It was all hugely frustrating, right up to the end of my career two years ago.

The American-Statesman has some remembrances in Sunday's paper about where various folks were when they learned about the Web. Many of them had a much less frustrating time of it than I did. It's a recommended good read.

Add comment


Security code
Refresh

DMC Firewall is developed by Dean Marshall Consultancy Ltd
http://wimberleylibrary.org/index.php/librarian-blog/2012/12/28/91-top-dvd-for-2012?task=trackback&font-size=larger
wimberleylibrary.org
crawl=CC-MAIN-2016-07
79956
application/http; msgtype=response
sha1:FPZKIV3QGHAQITN3GJ3BJMIPQJFMQOV2
<urn:uuid:9ef49329-ff7c-47a5-b2b1-2c0562172d3a>
2016-02-08T04:07:07Z
72.249.53.201
sha1:TV5IG4ZR7FOBX4NKKCG6ONUGSFQYUSKL
<urn:uuid:b7badf85-cf99-4aef-ac3d-4f9f59132245>
http://wimberleylibrary.org/index.php/librarian-blog/2012/12/28/91-top-dvd-for-2012?task=trackback&font-size=larger
response
<urn:uuid:cb3a2dc0-5d16-42ea-8137-2ea70a587194>
robots: classic
hostname: ip-10-236-182-209.ec2.internal
software: Nutch 1.6 (CC)/CC WarcExport 1.0
isPartOf: CC-MAIN-2016-07
operator: CommonCrawl Admin
description: Wide crawl of the web for February 2016
publisher: CommonCrawl
format: WARC File Format 1.0
conformsTo: http://bibnum.bnf.fr/WARC/WARC_ISO_28500_version1_latestdraft.pdf