PENN PRINTOUT
The University of Pennsylvania's Online Computing Magazine

PENN PRINTOUT October 1993 - Volume 10:2

[Printout | Contents | Search ]


NetNews: The press in the 90's

By Judy Smith and Helen Anderson

Looking for a newspaper that's a little bit different? How about a mix of in-depth coverage of national news topics supplemented by news briefs on local and international issues, a personal or professional advice column, a forum in which to debate the social issues of the day with your friends and colleagues at Penn, and help on the finer points of yesterday's linguistics lecture. You can find this, and more, in the newsgroups offered by Penn's NetNews service. With NetNews not only can you become your own editor and select the material you wish to read, you can also participate actively--you can be moderator, columnist, reporter, researcher, commentator, interviewer, talk-show host, or even media personality.

For Jon Baron, a faculty member in the Psychology Department who has been using NetNews for several years, NetNews "has become a major source of news, about equal to The New York Times, Science Magazine, All Things Considered, and McNeil Lehrer." Student Nghi Vo, in response to a question about the impact of NetNews on life at Penn, says that "Student life is meaningless without NetNews. I have learned so much from NetNews. Technical knowledge, social knowledge, anything--you name it." And SEAS staff member, Chip Buchholtz, responding to the same question, says, "There are too many ways to list. I got my first SysAdmin job by posting an ad in [the newsgroup] upenn.general. Most of my day-to-day decisions are based upon material that I've read in the various technical newsgroups. I've learned my profession entirely from talking with coworkers, reading newsgroups, and reading manuals."


NetNews overview

NetNews, also referred to as news or USENET, is a method of exchanging messages in predefined subject areas. In its capacity to exchange messages, news is often compared to electronic mail; the difference is that news is designed for exchanging messages (information, questions, tips, etc.) with thousands of other people. You need not know any of the individuals with whom you exchange messages, but you can generally be sure that the content of the messages will relate to a very specific topic.

If you subscribe to discussion groups via e-mail, you may wonder how NetNews differs. The most important difference is that NetNews is independent of e-mail. This means that your e-mail account is not cluttered with hundreds of messages that often make it difficult to locate important e-mail from your friends and colleagues. It also means that you need special software to access and read Penn's gigantic local news archive (see sidebar).

Penn's NetNews archive carries more than 3,000 separate discussion groups organized into hierarchical "newsgroups." Most of these newsgroups are distributed internationally over the Internet, but Penn's NetNews service supplements them with many local, University-based discussion groups. Using your newsreader software, you can subscribe to the newsgroups that interest you. Your subscriptions will contain individual messages called postings. You can then read the individual postings, reply to a posting, or create a new posting.

If the particular topic you wish to discuss is not available, you can request that a new group be created-in either the international or the local (upenn) newsgroup hierarchy. To request the creation of a local group, send an e-mail request to netnews@upenn.edu. See PennInfo (keyword "netnews") for information about creating non-Penn groups.


Penn newsgroups

Currently there are more than two hundred local Penn newsgroups. Course-related newsgroups, intended for student and faculty interaction, comprise the majority of these. Rounding out these offerings are groups created for organizations to share information and discuss common interests, for instance, the newsgroups of the Korean Student Association (upenn.ksa), and the International Affairs Association (upenn.iaa); a sprinkling of groups concerned with computing topics (upenn.elm, upenn.macintosh, and upenn.super-users-group); a few devoted to student life (upenn.hillel, upenn.kings-court.sci-tech-wing, upenn.newman, upenn.resnet); and the ever-popular general-interest newsgroups (upenn.general, upenn.forsale, upenn.forsale.sublet, and upenn.jobs.offered).

Two groups started last year illustrate the diversity in goals and methods that newsgroups can accommodate. Last year, engineering student Meng Weng Wong started the newsgroup upenn.talk, which has engaged faculty, staff, and students in lively debate on controversial issues ranging from last year's Daily Pennsylvanian confiscation and "Water Buffalo" incident to the more recent community reactions to the bike ban on Locust Walk.

At the other end of the spectrum is the moderated newsgroup from the School of Engineering, upenn.seas.deans-forum, in which discussion is usually anonymous. Associate Dean John Keenan comments on how this newsgroup has impacted SEAS: "The deans-forum has provided us a means of obtaining rapid, anonymous input from our students. We have used it to receive evaluations of the advising system, the freshman year experience, the quality of physical facilities, and the responsiveness of support services for students. The feed-back has been extremely important to us and has helped us in the establishment of priorities and in defining (and ultimately solving) problems that we didn't know we had."

There is something for everyone in the NetNews offerings available both locally and internationally. Try them-you might find the perfect mix of offerings to help keep you informed about your profession, your academic interests, your hobbies, your community, and your social interests.

For more information about NetNews, check PennInfo (keyword "netnews") or pick up a copy of the PennNet Passport (guide to networking available from Wharton Reprographics for $2). Please pay particular attention to the information about network conventions and etiquette.

HELEN ANDERSON is Associate Director of Computing and Educational Technology Services at SEAS. JUDY SMITH is a Technical Writer for the ISC Communications Group.

Sidebar: Access to NetNews

To access Penn's central repository of NetNews postings you will need either an account on a host which offers access to the news or an IP-or Slip-connected workstation with news-reading software.

Campus host that offer access to the news include dolphin, eniac.seas,fred.wharton, mail.sas,and mscf, pobox, relay. Once connected to one of these hosts, all you need to do is issue a command that will start the news-reading software -- typically `rn' or `news.'

If you have an IP- or Slip-connected workstation, you can use desktop software such as NewsWatcher (Macintosh) or Trumpet (DOS or Windows) available from Penn's FTP server ftp.upenn.edu. Once you have the software, make sure that it is configured to point to Penn's news archive--netnews.upenn.edu.

Note: A campus-wide task force has been charged with evaluating newsreaders and providing recommendations on software suitable for widespread use in the Penn community. The recommendations of the task force will be announced in Penn Printout and on PennInfo. For more information, contact the task force co-chairs, Helen Anderson (anderson@eniac.seas) or Carol Katzman (katzman@wharton).