THE GOODS : The Modem Master : Magazine Editor Kathryn McCabe Guides Readers Through the Online World by Navigating Past the Techno-Hype
Kathryn McCabe is not surprised that thousands of the computer users who rushedout to buy Windows 95 were on the phones shortly thereafter, swamping the Microsoft hot lines with pleas for help. Many claimed to be misled by the marketing promises that the new operating system is a breeze to install. (“So easy even a television show host can install it,” Microsoft chairman Bill Gates had quipped to Jay Leno).
Installing Windows 95 is not easy, says McCabe, the editor of Online Access magazine, a publication for the serious computer novice. “I think a couple of months from now people will be glad they have it, but they shouldn’t expect it to be up and going in an hour. I would allow a whole weekend.”
In fact, she adds, hardly anything about using software and modems is really easy for the non-technical consumer. “I totally sympathize with people out there who are told how simple it will be to use some of these online services,” she said. McCabe, 34, a frequent speaker at industry conferences, has been talking a lot lately about the dangers of techno-hype. “I think the industry is guilty and the press is too. And I’ve seen the negative effects, if you promise people a Cadillac and they get a Toyota.”
This editor has an interesting vantage point on all manner of digital developments, distressing as well as hopeful. Her magazine is devoted to the booming world known as cyberspace or “going online.” Using a modem that can dial up other computers, the computer user has access to an almost infinite array of informational sources as simple as e-mail and as complex as the World Wide Web, the flashy multimedia region of the Internet.
“I can’t think of a single topic that isn’t available somewhere in the online world,” says McCabe, a former investments analyst with an MBA from the University of Chicago. “You can trade stocks and do banking, you can do a lot of shopping, some people got their college degrees online. You can book plane or hotel reservations, which I’ve tried but will probably wait a while before I do again. They are easy to make but hard to change.”
For a lot of computer users, this is like opening a present, she says. “They like going to a web site to see what they are going to find. I’m a big basketball fan and I really like [Indiana University basketball coach] Bobby Knight. I wanted to do my own Bobby Knight web page, but there were already three or four.” The amazing part of this, she adds, is that web technology has only been popular for about six months. “We ran our first web article last February.”
It’s a world in constant churn. McCabe estimates that 50% of the home computer users who sign on to an online service use up their free hours and leave, sometimes for another service, sometimes just unimpressed.
But the Chicago-based Online Access thrives on such changes. In three years it has sprouted from being a quarterly to a monthly, from a staff of two to 20 and from a distribution of 30,000 copies per issue to its current 150,000 copies.
Originally subtitled “The Magazine That Makes Modems Work,” it now describes itself as “Your Connection to Online Services, Bulletin Boards and the Internet.” The magazine was founded by publisher Robert Jordan 10 years ago when online services were limited to informational text on a screen. “Librarians and government bureaucrats were our main subscribers,” says McCabe.
She was in graduate school at the time, learning how to download homework assignments from a computer, and recalls that “It took two pages of DOS commands to get into the computer.” She started free-lancing for the magazine four years ago and joined the staff a year later. “About that time things started picking up speed and I think we were mirroring what was going in on the computer industry.”
In a key move, Prodigy launched a major advertising campaign that switched from computer magazines to network television and consumer magazines. “The general population for the first time was seeing such pitches as ‘Sign on and make your own airline reservations,’ or ‘Find out the weather forecast.’ Suddenly the general public was being made aware of a brand new technology.” About the same time, a major drop in prices made computers more affordable so there were a surge of new buyers.
McCabe sees her magazine as bridging a gap between such techie staples as PC Computing and the trendy technology lifestyle publication Wired. And though there are others in the online category (and new publications appearing regularly), their closest competitors seem to be the membership magazines of such online services as CompuServe, in terms of no-fluff stories.
“We’ve added more color and a lot more graphics, but I’m not sure our core readers care,” McCabe said. “They worry that we are looking too trendy--they are very information intense. Our top story this year was a complicated article on modem tips that didn’t have any art.”
In addition to standing columns on new products, trends and services, Online Access offers more detailed articles; the September issue includes features on finding a job online, safe, fun places for kids online, telecommunications software to bring a home office up to speed and a look at the best web browsers for exploring the Internet.
McCabe thinks the magazine’s relationship with its readers is helped by her staff’s acknowledgment that they are struggling too. With three state-of-the-art computers, and a daily flood of new software programs, they are part test laboratory and part magazine.
“I was not a computer genius when I walked in that door. Somebody had to give me step-by-step instructions on how to go on the Internet. Our confidence has grown, but we have learned this right along with the readers.” And in the process, going online is getting simpler, she emphasizes. Only two years ago, the magazine’s annual Internet issue offered step-by-step instructions on how to get a file on the Internet. “It took 10 pages,” she says. “Now you can type in the name of the file you want to go to and be there--that doesn’t even take half a page of instructions.”
And the online future holds even more dramatic developments, she predicts: “The only thing I know for certain is that five years from now the stuff we are using today will be obsolete.”
