As most Michiganders probably know by now, there's a strike going on at
the Detroit Newspaper Agency, the company that runs the Detroit News and
the Detroit Free Press.  The management is putting out a paper with
replacement workers or scabs or some such people while the strikers are
publishing a paper called "The Detroit Journal" on the world wide web. 
For those of you with www access the URL is http://www.rust.net/workers

Here's a recent column from the Journal that grexers without WWW access
might enjoy.  If you want to see the document as it was meant to be seen,
grex members and non-members alike should be able to type right now:
 !lynx http://www.cyberspace.org/u/kaplan/bray31.htm 
but if you don't want to fire up lynx, here is the text.

I'm going to link this from the world conference to the internet conference.

=====
   
   
   [IMAGE] Monday, July 31, 1995
   
Building a Web page is simpler than it seems

   
   
   By HIAWATHA BRAY
   Detroit Journal Columnist
   
   Those of us who founded the Detroit Journal didn't know what we were
   doing. So we did it fast.
   
   We started work on the project July 17. Six days later, our first
   edition hit the Net, and we've already won a following in places such
   as Australia, Israel and Royal Oak.
   
   So maybe that makes us geniuses. OK. I'll accept that. Right now I
   could use one of those Macarthur Foundation "genius grants."
   
   But then, they would have to write you a check as well. And one for
   your spouse, your children, the guy who picks up your garbage -- just
   about everyone you know. Because nearly anybody can do what we've
   done. To tangle with the Web, you just need a good computer, the right
   software, a modem and a lot less money than you might think.
   
   Actually, you need a couple of computers. Most Web pages are created
   on a home or business computer and then loaded onto a server, a
   separate machine that is directly linked to the Internet. For
   instance, I typed this article on my home PC. Then I uploaded it to an
   Internet server computer owned by the Journal's Internet provider, a
   West Bloomfield Township firm called RustNet. We've rented some
   electronic space on the RustNet computer where we store all our Web
   files. The price: just $40 a month.
   
   RustNet is one of many companies offering this service. You can post
   your Web page on any Web server in the world, but you'll probably want
   one nearby. That way you can upload files with a local phone call.
   
   But even before you get Internet access, you must learn the basics of
   designing a Web page. The World Wide Web uses a special code called
   Hypertext Markup Language, or HTML. This language features a set of
   bizarre-looking, but actually quite simple, commands that will link
   your page to other files on your Internet server, or to files on
   Internet computers all over the world.
   
   For example, have you ever read the San Francisco Free Press, the
   first strike newspaper to be published on the Internet? You can now,
   by clicking on the name of the paper, which is highlighted on your
   screen.
   
   I just created a hyperlink to a file located on a computer in San
   Francisco. Once you've finished this article, you may want to click on
   the highlighted words. Your machine will ask the San Francisco
   computer to send a copy of its home page to your computer. Other files
   attached to the home page, such as digitized graphics, will be sent
   along as well. Then your browser will translate everything, and
   display it on your screen..
   
   So how did I make the link to the San Francisco computer? Simply by
   typing a command that looks something like this: a
   href="http://wow.ccnet.com/SF_Free_Press/welcome.html". I didn't type
   it exactly right, because if I did, you wouldn't be able to see it.
   Correctly written hyperlinks are invisible when you run them through a
   browser.
   
   Those crazy-looking hyperlink commands shouldn't scare you away from
   the Web. There is free software that makes it easy to write HTML code.
   
   I've been using a Windows program called HTML Assistant. It's easy to
   get a copy if you can do FTP file downloads. You can find it at
   ftp.isri.unlv.edu. My colleague Steve Henderson uses a Macintosh, so
   he relies on an editor called HTML.edit, also available for free. You
   can find an FTP-ready copy of this program at sunsite.doc.ic.ac.uk.
   
   These programs are text editors that can be used for writing an
   article. But they also can insert all the standard HTML commands at
   the touch of a few buttons. For instance, I can highlight the words
   San Francisco Free Press and then click on a button marked Link. The
   software asks for the file I want to link up with. I type in the
   address of the Free Press home page and press OK. That's that. San
   Francisco Free Press is now a hyperlink.
   
   Or suppose I want to put a space between this line
   
   and the next. Or maybe I'd like to draw a line underneath this
   sentence.
   
   
     _________________________________________________________________
   
   
   
   Or maybe I'd like to list all the unions involved in the present
   strike:
   
     * Newspaper Guild Local 22
     * Teamsters Local 372
     * Mailers Local 2040
     * Detroit Newspaper Union Local 13N
     * Detroit Typographical Union Local 18
     * Engravers Local 289M
       
   I did all this by using HTML Assistant to embed the correct commands
   in my file. Plugging in these commands took less time than typing up
   that list of unions.
   
   All this is done with ASCII characters -- the plain-vanilla coding
   system for letters, numbers and symbols that is the basic computer
   industry standard. HTML Assistant and other Web editor programs work
   with ASCII because that's the character set used by Web browsers.
   
   Unfortunately, most commercial word processors, such as Word Perfect,
   Microsoft Word or Lotus Ami Pro, don't use pure ASCII text. They have
   their own invisible codes embedded in the text, and these can play
   havoc with a browser.
   
   You can still write your text on one of these word processors. When
   you're done, click on the Save As ... command. You'll see a list of
   possible formats for saving the file. Look for the words ASCII, Text
   or Text Only, and save the file in that format. That way, you'll have
   straight ASCII text to work with when you start putting in your HTML
   codes.
   
   Designing a primitive Web page is easy. That's why there are now many
   hundreds of thousands of Web pages, designed by engineers, art
   directors and 10-year-olds.
   
   But many of these Web pages are awful. Punching in hyperlinks is one
   thing. Designing an attractive and well-organized Web publication is
   something else.
   
   Still, the Web makes it easy for you to improve your page design
   skills. You can start by visiting well-designed pages and seeing how
   they were done.
   
   Most browsers have a command that lets you view the entire page, with
   all the HTML commands included. It's usually called "View" or "View
   Source," and is usually on the pull-down menu at the top of the
   screen.
   
   This feature lets you read a Web page to see exactly how the designer
   achieved a particular effect, such as using boldface type or centering
   a headline.
   
   The Web also gives you a license to steal. When you build your own
   page, you can copy commands you've seen on other pages, rewrite the
   hyperlinks to match the names of your own files, and you're in
   business.
   
   So if you see anything on our page that you'd like to imitate, feel
   free to swipe our source code and use it as your own. We couldn't stop
   you if we wanted to.
   
   We'll be trolling the Web and borrowing some bright ideas we see
   there, and making up a few of our own. Don't be surprised if you see
   many facelifts here at the Journal in the weeks ahead. And be sure to
   tell us what you think of them. Even geniuses need advice now and
   then.
   
   
     _________________________________________________________________
   
   
   
   Back to Detroit Journal Columns
   
   Back to Detroit Journal Home Page

9 responses total.

It looks even better as seen in Netscape.  It's at
http://www.rust.net/~workers/columns/bray31.htm.

  Interesting...I've been wondering why the strikers don't publish
their point of view on the strike, as they seem uniquely qualified
to propegandize against the papers.  Though I'm surprised they'd
pick the web over print publishing, as it's got a much smaller
potential audience.

Right, print publishing has a larger potential audience.  But the problem
is that you need to pay per page.  WWW is publishing for people who can't
afford a printing press or even a xerox machine.

  Indeed, which is where I think it shines.  But the unions mentioned
are well financed, and you don't need to buy a printing press to
publish a small paper, that's what printing shops do.  Combined with
the fact that these are publishing pros, I'm sure they could publish
a paper on a shoe-string budget (they probably wouldn't need to pay
for any editing or layout/pre-press work).
  It strikes me as the unions are facing a real prospect of being
eliminated.  The News/FP (and the several union members who have broken
with the ranks) have made the union demands seem unreasonable, and if
they really want a lot of people to cancel subscriptions (to bargain
from a stronger position), I think they need to do more to counter the
News/FP propeganda, to sway public opinion in their favor.
  As an example, union folks are picketing outside Borders book stores
for carrying the News/FP.  Rather than do that, how about publish their
own paper, and ask Borders to distribute that too, so that people can
get both sides of the story?  If they wouldn't, *then* I'd see just
cause for picketing them.  If a book store or library refused to carry
info based on union politics, personally I'd have less respect for them.
At least in AA, Borders carries freebie papers of a wide political range
inside their entrance.  They seem to base their non-free selections on
consumer demand, and refuse only pornographic/obscene publications
(admittedly vague), but I doubt they have any political restrictions
on what they carry.

 This seems to be a very nice introduction to web publishing, and an 
affirmation that there are alot of people trying desperately to cling, and
downright demand, to keeping thier jobs in a dieing, superceeded industries.
 
Unfortunately, politicians use these people to get elected by telling them
that they are going to do something for them so they can keep thier
outdated jobs, instead of actually proposing something more original and
foreward thinking, such as retraining and relocation.

People, on the whole, are uncomfortable with change and fight to the teeth
to resist it sometimes. Same sort of thing is going on up here in the
northwest with lumber jobs, families are being rasied with thier children
skipping school to work in the forests for more family income, and
therefore, not knowing how to do anything else, and thus becoming very
loud opponents of any sort of resource management that threatens thier
livlyhood.

This kind of problem must be addressed soon as there will come a time when
workers will have to become more adaptive to the work enviroment and the
days of keeping the same job until retirement will be long gone.
Unfortunately, most of the voting public will resist this change as they
can remember a time when this wasn't the case, merely a generation ago.

BTW I have a personal web page (starting my HTML learning curve!) and it's
address is:

http://seattlecafe.com/rod/

And, yes I got started for next to nothing as I am completely broke and
still trying to keep up!

Looking at other stuff on the web newspaper, it looks like the people who are
doing it are almost as critical of their union as they are of the
management.  My guess would be that this isn't union funded, although it
doesn't say.

Yeah. Read the Mitch Albom column.

BTW, the "official" Detroit News is available as http://detnews.com/.
(Interestingly enough, detnews.com appears to be provided by
ICNet, the very same ISP that Grex has its connection through...)

OK   New semester.  New world.  Yeah?  Ok?  Hunh, hunh!!?!

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