Date: Sun, 14 Jan 1996 17:31:18 -0500
From: SMernit@aol.com
New Jersey Online Launches Full Service
Offers To Put The Entire State Of New Jersey On The Web
JERSEY CITY, JANUARY 8 -- New Jersey Online (http//:www.nj.com) -- the most
innovative, information-rich, and interactive local service on the World
Wide Web with more than 3,000 pages of news, forums, and original online
content -- launched its full service today with an offer to put the entire
state of New Jersey onto the Web.
New Jersey Online, a division of Advance Publications -- the publisher of
New Jersey's Star-Ledger, The Times (Trenton), and Jersey Journal -- said
it will provide every municipality, nonprofit group, school, class,
teacher, congregation, and community organization in the state with easy
online tools to let them create free Internet listings and home pages. And
it will offer the first 1,000 New Jersey residents who sign up the chance
to put their home pages on New Jersey Online, with prizes to be awarded for
the coolest pages.
New Jersey Online also announced that its basic service will be free to
consumers. Peter Levitan, President and CEO of New Jersey Online, said the
service will be supported primarily by advertisers. "We intend to take
advantage of the free-wheeling environment of the World Wide Web and not
build barriers with fees or bureacracy. The more people who come to New
Jersey Online, the more they, New Jersey Online and our advertisers will
benefit."
The launch of the service follows a successful preview in which New Jersey
Online built two sites that are recognized as "Cool Sites of the Day" --
Weather with the Old Farmer's Alamanc (now offering graphic five-day
forecasts for almost 700 cities worldwide) and the Yuckiest Site on the
Internet (an entertaining education site for children). The weather site is
permanently listed in Netscape's "What's Cool." The service also received
national attention for its Pope Page, which offered downloadable audio
blessing from the Pontiff during his 1995 visit to New Jersey. Even before
launch, the service has received heavy Internet traffic.
"We will provide New Jersey with the most useful, entertaining, and
intensely local service anywhere on the Internet," said Susan Mernit,
Editor of New Jersey Online. "This is the place where people will come
every day to find the news, a restaurant, or even a date. This is where
they will meet their neighbors online. And this is where they can send
e-mail to people in power.
Levitan and Mernit said the service will give special emphasis to serving
business people and employees of the state's larger companies, taking
advantage of the fact that today, much of the traffic on the Internet comes
from the office desktop. New Jersey Online will offer businesses a place to
list their businesses online, where consumers can search for them. The
service will make similar overtures to serve college students.
New Jersey Online will be highly interactive with 25 forums and searchable
restaurant, entertainment and movie databases. Visitors can check the
latest weather forecast, sports scores, and stock quotes, or catch up with
breaking national and international news, updates from the state capital,
or look up local entertainment and other events. They can browse areas
dedicated to arts & entertainment, including a site for Maxwell's, the
Hoboken music club; sports, including sites for youth soccer and weekend
skiing; and restaurants, with reviews from the Star-Ledger and The Times
and a chance for diners to add their own reviews. In addition, New Jersey
Online offers a searchable version of the current classified ads for
employment opportunities, cars, and personals.
Areas of New Jersey Online include:
NEWS AND LOCAL: Here's what every New Jerseyan needs to know about news,
politics, and issues in the state. Plus basic tax and census information on
more than 700 Jersey towns.
BUSINESS: List your business and search for colleagues in NJO's WWW
business directory for NJ businesses. Read breaking business and financial
news, and check out personal finance advice. Find out how you can make the
Internet work for you in our forum on Your Business and the WWW with Evan
Schuman, editor-at-large for Communications Week Magazine.
WEATHER: Check the weather in your city -- and almost 700 others worldwide.
Get the five-day forecasts, automatically updated throughout the day, plus
charming daily content from the Old Farmer's Almanac.
SPORTS: Read daily sports scores, statistics, and stories on favorite local
teams on the pro, semi-pro, college and high school circuits, and in-depth
coverage of the Big East. And yack about your favorite teams in the Fanzone
with Ravin' Jake, a wired sports fan who just can't get enough.
ENTERTAINMENT: Find entertainment listings. Find what movies are playing in
your neighborhood, read reviews from the Star-Ledger and The Times, and put
in your own two cents. Search for restaurants with reviews from the papers
and fellow diners. Argue about the latest CDs with Scott and Scott, the
service's resident music fans. And discuss the latest books in an area of
New Jersey Online devoted to reading, with forums and listings of author
appearances throughout the state.
SHOPPING AND STYLE: Save money with weekly listings of sales and bargains,
plus fashion, gossip and shopping tips from the Jersey Girl, NJO's resident
trendoid. Plus, the Ultimate Mall-finder, a complete directory of where to
shop for everything and anything in the state. And share recipes with
fellow cooks.
EDUCATION: Enter your school in the directory of Who's Who in New Jersey
Education, and use listings of WWW sites recommended by NJ educators to
help your kids learn. Take part in discussion forums for teachers and
parents on education issues.
FAITH: Join a forum lead by a New Jersey minister and rabbi and create a
home page for your own congregation.
"New Jersey Online offers Internet users a reason to come back to one site
again and again," said Editor Susan Mernit. "The range of content,
interactivity, and friendliness of the service give New Jerseyans a
hometown online, their own virtual Main Street."
New Jersey Online is the first full-scale online venture from Advance
Publications' newspaper group, the third largest in the US, which includes
The Star-Ledger, The Times (Trenton) and The Jersey Journal in New Jersey.
New Jersey Online combines original content targeted to the whole family
with the daily information resources from the three papers and interaction
with the audience.