Keeping Up on Things Wherever You Are

In today’s work world, timely information is an essential commodity for doing business. But getting information on the road can be tricky. As a business traveler, you may be cut off from your routine sources of information--the publications you usually read or the electronic databases to which you usually have access.

But information purveyors are figuring out new ways to deliver information while you’re on the road. Here are some of the options available to business travelers hungry for news, especially about the place they are visiting or developments back home.

Newspapers

Most major hotels, of course, offer guests complimentary morning newspapers delivered to their doors. In most cases, it is the local paper for the city in which the hotel is located. Other hotel chains will deliver a national paper, such as USA Today or the Wall Street Journal. In addition, many hotels subscribe to several papers, which they place in the lobby for the use of guests.

Many business travelers take the opportunity to read local papers when they’re traveling as a way to learn about events that might not make the papers at home.

When traveling internationally, ask the hotel concierge about international papers, such as the Financial Times, the International Herald Tribune or, if you’re traveling through the Pacific Rim, the Asian Wall Street Journal. Hotels can usually obtain these papers for you.

Faxes

For people who either can’t get or can’t wait for the paper, a growing number of news organizations are offering condensed versions of the next day’s paper by fax the night before.

This month, for example, CPC Communications Inc., a subsidiary of New York-based CPC Printing, which is one of the largest printers of financial documents in the world, is launching a 10-page fax newspaper geared to business users both on the road and at home.

The paper, called Info-Wire, comes out at 2 p.m. PST and is designed to reach business travelers through airlines, resorts, hotels and cruise ships, as well as in local corporate offices. For example, a hotel or airline would receive the faxed version daily, then copy it and distribute it to travelers. CPC is negotiating with a chain of Caribbean resorts, as well as with numerous hotel companies and the major airlines, Publisher Paul Schaye said.

“We’re aimed at the person who is off-line,” Schaye said. “The person in a hotel is not in their standard flow of information, and they’re really starved for their flow of information.”

Info-Wire, which is compiled from staff reports and wire services, contains mostly business news and stock market information, but it also includes a page of world news and a page of sports.

Info-Wire may be the latest, but it is not the first to put faxed information into the hands of travelers. In November, 1990, New York Times Co. started a six-page fax for people who don’t have ready access to the newspaper. The fax is a condensed version of the newspaper, with a cross-section of news, features and sports--even the crossword puzzle.

The fax, which goes out at 8 p.m. PST in advance of the next day’s paper, has about 150,000 readers, more than 75% of them Americans who are traveling, Publisher Patricia Ecke said.

Most travelers read copies of the fax paper distributed by their hotels or cruise ships.

Dow Jones & Co., publishers of the Wall Street Journal, has also begun distributing a two-page fax of financial news from the Journal.

Journal Fax comes out at 2 p.m. PST and contains highlights from the next day’s Wall Street Journal, said Pat McParland, product manager for Dow Jones’ personal publishing division.

Currently, there is just one version, which goes to hotels and individual subscribers. However, the company is working on a customized version that would allow individuals to receive selected stock quotes for their portfolios in addition to the news, she said.

In addition, the Los Angeles Times Syndicate has been offering Financial Fax since 1992. The one-page executive summary of stock information has been customized for each subscriber’s portfolio. Each report contains business news notes and commentary. Travelers can have Financial Fax forwarded to any fax number they choose so their reports can reach them when they’re on the road.

And the London-based Financial Times is looking into providing faxed information, according to spokesman Keith Jackson.

Although faxed information offers some advantages to people in remote locations, or to those who need information sooner than they can get it in the regular paper, fax is really a transitional technology, Ecke said.

“It’s a bridge between print and the new electronic distribution of news,” he said. “It’s an in-between mode.”

Interactive Technology

For travelers who can take their computers with them, or who know they will have access to a computer at their destination, there are several on-line news services.

Subscribers with a laptop, modem and a phone line can get access to news sources ranging from wire services, such as Associated Press or Reuters, to newspapers, such as the Washington Post or the Financial Times.

The three largest on-line services are CompuServe, Prodigy and America Online. In September, the Los Angeles Times will introduce its own on-line news service that will be distributed through Prodigy.

In addition, the Financial Times is available on FT Profile, as is information from BBC World Broadcasts, the Economist and Business Week.

Some of the on-line services, including CompuServe, also offer electronic clipping services that will search out articles on topics of interest to the subscriber and put them in a special file.