What types of PC hardware are most used by U.S. dailies in computer-assisted reporting? Findings from the 1994 and 1995 national surveys conducted by the School of Communication at the University of Miami suggest preference patterns are emerging. They include:
Processors. The most commonly used central processing unit for CAR projects is an Intel 80486-type that has been on the market since 1993. A total of 43 percent of all newspapers used "486s" for CAR in 1995. Only a handful of newsrooms percent) used the then-new Intel Pentium processor.
A little more than one in 10 newspapers used any type of Macintosh for CAR (12 percent) and another one in 10 still used older 80386-type processors.
Differences in small and large newspapers are striking. Larger newspapers, for example, defined as those with daily circulation over 52,800 copies, rarely use Macintoshes for CAR, but are widely known to use them for graphics. Almost one-quarter of smaller newspapers use them for CAR. In fact, it is the second-largest category of CPU for the smaller dailies and only by a small margin.
Top operating system
Operating Systems. The most-used operating system in 1995 was the popular combination of DOS and a Windows overlay. More than half of the newspapers responding to the 1995 survey (52 percent) reported using some form of DOS with a version of Windows. Since the data in the 1995 survey were collected early in the year, prior to the debut of the national Windows 95 beta program or the final release, the newest form of Windows was not included or found to be in use.
CD-ROMS. In the 1995 survey, more than half of the newspapers reported using one or more CD-ROM drives for CAR. A total of 38 percent reported using one CD-ROM drive and another 33 percent reported using two or more CD-ROM drives, or more than 71 percent used a CD-ROM drive. Large dailies typically have more than one CD-ROM drive, while smaller dailies are more likely to have only one drive and a much larger proportion had none.
About 39 percent of the reporting newspapers used one or more CD-ROM drive in newsrooms. Of that, 36 percent reported using one CD-ROM reader, and just 4 percent used more than one CD-ROM reader. This reflects a 23 percent growth in the number of newspapers with two or more CD-ROM drives and a 19 percent growth in the number of newsrooms with CD-ROMs in use for CAR overall.
Greater capacity
Hard drives. Hard drive manufacturers in 1994 and 1995 were making larger and faster drives and, at the same time, lowering their prices. This meant that newsrooms using personal computers for CAR had greater capacity available to them. And they were taking advantage of the newer drives. The mean CAR hard-drive size was over a gigabyte (1,055 MB) in early 1995. A year earlier, the mean hard-drive size was considerably less at 853 MB for the newspapers reporting.
The most frequent reported sizes in early 1995 were 1 GB (10 percent), 500 MB drives (5 percent), and 2 GB (4 percent). The sizes ranged from a 20 MB drive still in use to a 6.7 GB server in use for CAR.
These data suggest that news organizations acquire new CAR hardware as it becomes available on the market, but not very quickly. This suggests budgetary influences and that CAR is not yet a high spending priority in most newsrooms. Equipment is acquired as spending limitations permit it, but often a year or more after the new technology debuts on the market.
Nevertheless, there seemed to have been steady hardware advances in daily newspaper newsrooms between 1994 and 1995, suggesting similar growth between 1995 and 1996 as well.
Bruce Garrison can be reached at (305) 284-2846, or send e-mail to bgarriso@umiami.ir.miami.edu