the Symposium on Multimedia
Convergence organized by the International Labor Organization
(ILO), Wilfred Kiboro, managing director of Nation Printers and
Publishers, in Kenya, expressed the idea of a printing system
through a satellite internet connection, instead of carrying
newspapers every day by truck all over the country. This
printing system would mean cheaper distribution costs, and a
drop in the price of newspapers.

Did the internet compete with television and reading? In
Quebec, 30.7% of the population was connected to the internet
in March 1998. A poll showed that 28.8% of internet users were
watching television less than before, but only 12.1% were
reading less. As stated by the online magazine Multimedium in
April 1998, this was "rather encouraging for the department of
Culture and Communications which has the double task of
furthering the development of information highways... and
reading!"

According to a survey for Online MSNBC in February 1998, the
internet - as a new medium - was well liked, matching and
sometimes surpassing other media. Merrill Brown, editor-in-
chief of Online MSNBC, wrote in Internet Wire of February 1998:
"The internet news usage behavior pattern is shaping up similar
to broadcast television in terms of weekday use, and is used
more than cable television, newspapers and magazines during
that same period of time. Additionally, on Saturdays, the
internet is used more than broadcast television, radio or
newspapers, and on a weekly basis has nearly the same hours of
use as newspapers." People were spending 2.4 hours per week
reading magazines, 3.5 hours surfing the web, 3.6 hours reading
newspapers, 4.5 hours listening the radio, 5 hours watching
cable TV, and 5.7 hours watching broadcast TV.

Jean-Pierre Cloutier was the editor of "Chroniques de Cyberie",
a weekly French-language online report of internet news. When
interviewed in fall 1997 by Francois Lemelin, chief-editor of
"L'Album", a magazine from Club Macintosh of Quebec, he
expressed his views about the internet as a medium: "I think
the medium is going to continue being essential, and then give
birth to original, precise, specific services, by which time we
will have found an economic model of viability. For information
cybermedia like "Chroniques de Cyberie" as well as for info-
services, community and online public services, electronic
commerce, distance learning, the post-modern policy which is
going to change the