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| THE OSTRICH It used to be that every 10 years or so, an East Coast reporter from the Wall Street Journal or the New York Times would make a two-day visit to Dayton, Ohio, to write about a quintessential Rust Belt town where times weren't good. Well, Dayton is enjoying the 17th year of uninterrupted economic growth this year, and we don't see too many doom-saying East Coast writers around here. In fact, in a recent story on how Dayton has re-invented itself, ABC News with Peter Jennings featured Lexis-Nexis and spoke of how its employees are thriving in the high-tech age. But last November, West Coast high-tech writer Claire Tristram came to look around. Her article ["The Ostrich," Spring 1999] began with the usual disparaging remarks about our airport and cornfields. She then used another tired writer's cliché, introducing the chief executive officer of Lexis-Nexis, Hans Gieskes, by trying to read his management style from his office décor. It appears the writer already had her mind made up about Lexis-Nexis before her jet landed in Dayton. The result is an article with omissions of important facts and a distorted view of our company, despite the best efforts of those interviewed to discuss candidly a large, complex business in flux. The first essential fact that Tristram repeatedly ignored is that no information provider with unique content needs to give it away to grow market share. Year after year, Lexis-Nexis remains one of the most successful information-services companies in the world. No competitor has been that consistent, and many still can't maintain profitability. Left unclear in the article is that more than half of Lexis-Nexis's business is as a legal publisher. Her comparisons of Lexis-Nexis and Yahoo! are nonsensical. We spent many hours with the writer during and after her visit to clarify that our target markets are business-to-business and legal professionals, where we maintain leading positions. The comparison also is an insult to our many customers who exercise sound business decisions when they choose Lexis-Nexis for their specialized information needs. Comments in the article from our valued customer, the communications firm of Fleishman-Hillard in Washington, D.C., were taken out of context. Coleman Hutchins, director of information and new media, gave permission to quote him: "Several points were taken out of context. First, I prefer the Nexis product—its breadth is unbeatable, and the interface is solid. I gave Universe a ringing endorsement. Second, Dow Jones did offer to migrate us from DowVision to Dow Jones Interactive at no additional cost, but only because they were considering phasing out DowVision because of Y2K concerns (which they have now addressed, I'm told). Even if they had migrated us to Dow Jones Interactive, our access to only a limited archive of sources would have stayed the same—unless...we were willing to pay more. To portray, as the reporter did, that the transition to Dow Jones Interactive would have been completely 'free' is in fact inaccurate." The article misquoted Richard Van Vleck, Lexis-Nexis vice president of corporate strategy. [The article quoted him as saying that "our customers aren't ready for a browser interface, even today" and said he seemed to believe that browsers are a fad.] He said that our core legal and some information professional customers are only now migrating to the Web, even though Lexis-Nexis has had Web-based products since 1994. The writer ignored our long-standing efforts in Web-based products. Van Vleck talked at length about why Web browsers are making a profound impact on the information industry and Lexis-Nexis. He did not say or imply that they are a fad. As the writer was told, Lexis-Nexis provides its customers products that allow them to search our database via a Web browser that has capabilities similar to those of our classic system. We introduce new Web-based features on a 90-day development cycle. The remarks of Jim King, vice president of Nexis product strategy, were also misrepresented. (The article quoted him as saying that Lexis-Nexis is investing heavily to catch up with competitors.) What he actually said was that Lexis-Nexis has always provided innovative product capabilities and continues to invest in exciting technologies. The bottom line is that Lexis-Nexis is anything but complacent. It is a growing, innovative company that intends to be around well into the 21st century, making money—and avoiding a crash-and-burn finale. —Deborah Norris AUTHOR'S REPLY: I actually began reporting this story with a positive bias toward Lexis-Nexis, based on good experiences as a graduate student and as a business journalist. But I also started out with a belief that the Internet is revolutionizing how people find, process, and disseminate information. At Lexis-Nexis, I was told over and over again that the Internet is nothing more than a networking technology—a convenient way to connect customers with Lexis-Nexis databases. I agree with Norris that "fad" was an inappropriate word to describe Van Vleck's description of browser technology. Otherwise, I stand by the facts in the story. I have extensive notes and tapes from my interviews to back me up. —Claire Tristram Despite some suggestions to the contrary, the short answer is: No, I was not misquoted when I said that people have never heard of Lexis-Nexis. My statement was based on Outsell research that shows that Lexis-Nexis, and other traditional on-line business information vendors, have relatively low brand awareness among business end-users. I will say that the article misses the point that the real threat to the Lexis-Nexises of the world is not Yahoo and Lycos and all the other consumer-oriented stuff, but the targeted information services you are starting to see appear from all kinds of new competitors. Content is being targeted to groups of business users as never before, and targeting is a challenge when you have 25,000 sources on every imaginable topic. But the brand awareness issue for Lexis-Nexis isn't the death knell that Tristram makes it out to be, and the company has other advantages and assets that were missing from her article. —David Curle Those of us in Dayton know Tristram must have an ax to grind. The real question is, why? She compromised her journalistic integrity for a snappy headline and free trip to Dayton? Surely, the long ride through all the cornfields past all the water towers wasn't worth it. —Diane Pencil I had to weep and laugh as I read the article. I left Lexis-Nexis because I saw dry rot setting in six years ago, and it looks like nothing has changed. The "hairnets"—the term that Lexis-Nexis uses internally for its main customers, the librarian/researchers—are just as stuck as Lexis-Nexis. It's like a little, isolated ecosystem in some lost and hidden valley—librarians doing obscure research with antique tools disconnected from the real world. It's not so much that Yahoo or Dow Jones will eventually eat Lexis-Nexis's lunch. Those companies are really exploiting a new market with new tools. No, some day the last Simmons College library school graduate will conduct the last Boolean search against the Alexandria library in Dayton, and then Lexis-Nexis will turn out the lights in Building One. —Jeff Crigler RICH MAN, POOR MAN I found the debate between John Perry Barlow and Timothy Jenkins [The Last Word, Spring 1999] interesting, though U.S.-centric. There are three major reasons Internet usage is low in Africa: One, it has little apparent use to the average African. Two, technical support, even for those with Internet service, is poor. Indeed, for many there are no phone lines or electricity. Three—the main reason—there is too much poverty. Yet, Uganda shows what can happen when the price is right. Uganda got its first cell phone company four years ago, but only 10,000 subscribers signed up. When a second company was licensed, 25,000 persons subscribed in just two months. Today, the companies cannot satisfy market demand. The secret: The new company dropped rates from 85 cents a minute to about 12. For the Internet, the price is still high but is coming down because of competition. —Hon. Dr. Johnson Nkuuhe As an African, my view is that the "disadvantaged" actually have a distinct cultural plus: Africa has an intrinsic understanding of the principles of community—how the whole is bigger than the sum of the parts. Here we call it "ubuntu." This ethos strongly correlates with the ethos of the information economy. Africa enjoys other advantages, including: Digitization. Much of the world's knowledge is not digitized yet. Low-cost labor could do this job. Translation. Africans have an innate talent for language. On average, each African speaks five languages. Coding. There is a link between the ability to make music and the ability to write software. Africans understand rhythm and patterns. I agree with Jenkins that technology has given a head start to those who can afford it, but this is a short-term way of looking at the issue. Ultimately, it is humans who will lessen the gap, not technology. —Irma Verwey TOUGH QUESTIONS The most important of the "new rules" [CEO User's Guide, Spring 1999] flows from the death blow the Internet gives to the time-honored maxim that one either competes on the basis of low price or on the basis of differentiation. With the Internet, you can lower price and differentiate, and any competitor who doesn't figure out how to do both is toast. —David E. Miller I enjoyed your article but take issue with one point. You state: "The Amazons of other industries are depressing margins across the board. Their effect will last even if they don't." While Amazon did initially have a big impact on pricing, once Barnes & Noble came on-line, Amazon's prices went up. Also, the real impact of the Net won't be on prices, especially for many consumer goods. The real impact will be convenience, and people have shown they are willing to pay for convenience. —Rod White WEAPON OF MATH DESTRUCTION David Reed's article [Digital Strategy, Spring 1999] demonstrates a major mistake regarding Internet growth. The article [overstates the importance of on-line communities because it] fails to take into account human behavior. Take myself as an example. When the dust settles, I'll be a member of less than a dozen on-line groups. Even then, I'll quickly find myself using them on an "as-needed" basis, rather than regularly. Infinite opportunity does not equal infinite capability. There's just not enough time in the day. —Charles Levenson David Reed's article raises several topics to the proper level—the conscious level. Whether the mathematics are completely correct is really immaterial. The real importance is the concept. —Ronald J. Robinson
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