Alliance of Online Guides, Local Newspapers an Entertaining Value

“What do I want to do tonight?” is a question often answered by a glance in the newspaper. But with the proliferation of city and regional Web guides, I now can go online to find where a certain movie’s playing and if there’s a cheap restaurant nearby. But after a few days wading through the online morass, I realize the strengths of print: simple to use, easy to find.

I can pick up a weekly paper on a street corner or a daily from my doorstep versus turning on the computer and clicking through page after page in frantic searching. Papers are light and portable, meaning I can take the movie listings with me in case of a sellout.

But before this becomes a gushy promo for the paper that’s currently staining your fingers, let me say that online guides have their convenience too. If I’ve been holed up all day on the computer I might already be online, so checking in with a local guide might be convenient. Plus, many of these sites provide deeper information, links to respected magazine content or personalized features.

Though it might take some time to navigate these sites, the payoff can be worth it if you find what you seek. Pacific Bell’s AtHand service (www.athand.com) covers all of California, and it has gone beyond a glorified Yellow Pages to offer detailed guides from Travel & Leisure, BAM, Zagat and Foghorn Press.

When looking for campgrounds, for instance, I could read about amenities and look over area maps. AtHand’s entertainment section is uneven, but you can run searches for clubs or restaurants within a certain radius of your house.

These types of personalized features are making local online guides more attractive. CitySearch, the Pasadena-based company that pioneered these sites, has eight U.S. cities covered, with three to come (including an L.A. site co-produced by The Times) later this year. Many of its sites have a Scout feature that lets you input your interests and receive e-mail telling you if a favorite performer is in town. Microsoft Sidewalk, which focuses on arts and entertainment only, has similar features, but isn’t planning an L.A. roll out any time soon.

If you don’t mind a guerrilla approach, with hits and misses, check out Yahoo!’s L.A. guide (www.la.yahoo.com), with many links. You won’t get the local color of other guides, except when you stumble onto Web sites produced by local bands or nightclubs. Basically, Yahoo! made a subset of its exhaustive categories, and added information from Fodor’s (restaurants, hotels), TV Guide (television listings) and Hollywood Reporter and Billboard (entertainment news).

For the more quirky, alternative-minded, there’s the LA Weekly’s online adjunct (www.laweekly.com). Proving once again that it takes a local staff to understand a local scene, the Weekly’s in-depth summer guide gives “Virtual Vacations” that include a ride on the Metrolink or a visit to a race track. Rather than getting bleary-eyed from all that on-screen text, I preferred its interactive movie and restaurant listings. Choose a neighborhood, day of the week and movie, and it gives out times and theater locations.

Though these personalized searches seem like parlor tricks to get you online, they really can be helpful in a pinch--if you can trust the source and are certain the searches aren’t bought by advertisers. Most Sidewalk and CitySearch sites have stressed a separation of editorial and ads, but others like Yahoo! and AtHand lack a true editorial voice.

As for newspapers and online guides coexisting, the latest alliances show that they need each other to show consumers the way. And that’s fine, because newspapers will provide the established voice, while online guides will provide the searches, maps and eventually an easy way to buy tickets.

Mark Glaser is a freelance technology writer and critic. You can reach him at McGlaze@aol.com