1 05-28-86 02:56 aed

And now, the electronic journalist 
UPI LifeStyle
 (850)
 adv sun june 1 or thereafter

By BILL LOHMANN 
UPI Feature Writer

   ATLANTA (UPI) _ Mike Greenly proudly labels himself "the world's
first interactive electronic journalist" _ a mouthful of a title that
is easier to describe than it is to say.
   Armed with a personal computer and a lifetime in communications, 
Greenly has become a set of traveling eyes and ears for PC users 
worldwide stuck at home in front of their keyboards.
   "This is a major new medium," Greenly said, "that allows me to
talk to the world."
   Greenly, a 41-year-old freelance marketing consultant, is not a
trained journalist but a talented writer with a penchant for computers.
He covers events, taps out his observations on a PC and feeds them
to a central system so other PC users with similar interests can hook up
to the system and read all about it.
   But the key is the give-and-take between Greenly and his readers. 
Within minutes, readers can ask questions or make comments by sending 
messages to the central system or start computer conversations among 
themselves.
   It is a sophisticated game of instant letters-to-the-editor played
by electronic pen-pals, estimated to number in the thousands, and
nothing like it has ever been seen.
   "It's like going to a great dinner party with people who have just
read the same magazine article and can talk about it," said Lisa
Carlson, a management consultant in Washington, who is a computer buff
and first met Greenly by reading his on-line stories.
   "This medium gives everyone a microphone," said Greenly, who
covered the Comdex Spring computer show in Atlanta recently. It brings 
people amazingly close together because you touch minds. I think this 
medium can do a lot for linking people together around the planet."
   Greenly writes about most anything. He covered the political
conventions in 1984 as a representative of "Transcoastal Electronic
News Service." He was in the audience for this year's Academy Awards.
He has interviewed movie stars and politicians. One day, he hopes to
interview a president in the White House. "Although it doesn't have to
be this president, " Greenly says.
   He filed interviews conducted with a New York doctor about the
trauma of treating AIDS patients. Those first few reports, fueled by an
outpouring of positive feedback from readers along the computer lines,
led Greenly to write a book, "Chronicle: The Human Side of Aids."
   His reports are unlike routine news accounts. He writes from a
first-person perspective, spicing his stories with color missing from
other media reports.
   "He's sort of a Charles Kuralt on-line," mused Carlson. "You 
never know where he's going to turn up next."
   Greenly does not attempt to paint the big picture of anything he
covers. Instead, he prefers to seek out often-obscure human-interest 
angles overlooked by others.
   "I try to talk about the experience of being in a place," said
Greenly, a South Carolina native who now lives in New York. "I like to
show the human sides of things. I can write as long as I want or as
short as I want. I don't have any editors.
   "I like doing different things and taking readers with me. Not 
after the fact, but while I'm doing it."
   Greenly gave up the relative security of the corporate world _ he
worked as a product manager at Lever Brothers for two years and spent 13
years at Avon before leaving two years ago as vice president for
marketing _ to chase his imagination and feed is fascination with
computers.
   Greenly makes a comfortable living as a consultant. However, he
made nothing for his first forays into computer reporting. He spent
$2,500 out of his own pocket covering each of the political conventions,
for example, and lost valuable time from his money-making job.
   But he loved the work and he craved the reader feedback.
   "That's why I bother to do this," he said. "If I'm not going to
be paid in money, I need to be paid in satisfaction."
   The recent computer show in Atlanta, marked the first time
Greenly's reporting was financed. Network Systems International of
Hartford, Conn., which provides computer conferencing worldwide, footed
Greenly's bill and has assigned him to cover other events in the future.
   "We're not doing this because we have hundreds of thousands of
users clamoring for it now, " said Phil Moore, president of NSI. "But
because people will know where to find it when they do want it.
   "Will this become popular? I think so. I don't think it's ever
going to overcome newspapers or magazines, but it does add another 
dimension of distributing information."
   No one is making large sums of money on computerized interactive 
journalism yet, and Greenly doubts he will ever become rich by working
as an on-line reporter.
   "Eventually there will be ways to make money from this but that is
not my motivation, " Greenly said. "I like to think of myself as an
early days pioneer just showing this is possible."

   adv sun june 1