A Tough Test in Prime Time - Internet/Web/Online Service Information

Web sites did a good job handling millions of election visitors. But they were no match for TV.

ELECTION DAY IS ALL ABOUT SEPArating the winners from the losers. But that's not exactly how it worked out last Tuesday for the presidential contenders. And not for online news sites, either.

This was supposed to be the year the Web proved itself a news source by attracting a critical mass of users. Judging by the numbers, Election Day was a triumph. Millions of surfers jammed virtually every major news and information site. Some, like CNN.com, MSNBC.com and ABCnews.com more than doubled their average audience, according to researcher Jupiter Media Metrix. And while there were scattered technical glitches, nothing disastrous occurred. GNN.com drew the most traffic on Election Day, according to Media Metrix. About 3.5 million unique visitors went to the site, while MSNBC.com scored the second-highest number, about 2.6 million visitors. And as the fight for Florida dragged on through the week, traffic actually climbed as millions of people sought instant access to the latest developments.

But online election coverage also laid bare all the Web's weaknesses: It was slow. It was confusing. It was static. It offered little analysis. Streaming video didn't stream or was too jerky to watch. The Web just didn't crackle with excitement, even as the most amazing election story in memory unfolded.

"The news media are still learning how to make use of the Web," says Michael Cornfield, research director of George Washington University's Democracy Online Project. "They haven't fully grasped what it can do so people can use it. It will take another election cycle or two to get it right."

Once again, TV proved the medium of choice -- and not only for viewers. CNN.com, for example, spent months beefing up its server capacity and bandwidth, but it still took every news cue from its older sibling. In the CNN.com newsroom in Atlanta, dozens of editors, writers and technicians sat at their terminals -- one eye glued to the action on nearby TVs -- awaiting the latest word from CNN political director Tom Hannon, who was calling races for the cable network. All news and analysis came online to CNN.com through the TV operation, primarily because it was the TV operation that gathered the news. The process by which the Web site got its information was intended to ensure that when anchor Judy Woodruff announced that Washington state had gone to Al Gore, the site reflected that.

Still, on a night when television got blasted for early calls, wrong calls and retracted calls, news sites at least offered visitors access to complete data -- even if it wasn't always up to date. Griffith Jones, a financial analyst in Virginia Beach, Va., found himself turning to the Web now and then to see the latest on state contests. But he always returned to TV. "They've got all the talking heads on the television, and there are not that many talking heads on the Web yet," he says. Plus, he adds, "I certainly do like my 20-inch television better than my 2-inch box on my computer screen."

Online news organizations aren't fretting publicly about missed opportunities. They stress that their strength lies in ready data -- despite the fact that sites like CNN.com and ABCnews.com posted charts containing numbers that didn't match those in stories and often trailed local TV in updating results of state and local races. "Given the general chaos, I think we did a fantastic job," says Monty Mullig, senior VP of CNN Internet Technologies. "There's no other medium where you could see such a huge amount of information."

But data alone won't carry a breaking news story as long and tortuous as last week's election. For an event like that, says Jones, the real question is: "Do I want to sit there and read? Probably not." Television, he notes, "is less work."

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