The _N & O_ used the same approach on news stories. When North Carolina was about to gas a man named David Lawson, readers could click on the item “The Lawson Execution.” They could see a schedule of the events ahead—from Lawson’s removal from his cell to the EKG examination that would help certify his death. After the Associated Press reported the execution, readers could click on a headline and read the details. They could even summon up “Preparing for the execution” or “How the gas chamber works.” The Lawson story was a just a sample—the _N & O_ at the time wasn’t constantly doing multimedia on breaking news—but it was easy to envision the future for American newspapers using the Web. Imagine the blessings for journalists who wanted to write on neat little odds and ends without getting in the way of their main articles. They could merely add “links” to offshoot stories. Perhaps the reader could even click and summon up a collateral audio report or even a video. At first it might be hard to do all this on deadline, but links would be a cinch as software improved. What’s more, newspaper writers might evolve into true personalities just like their counterparts on television. After all, if a reporter’s byline were in blue letters, you could click your mouse to see a photo and maybe even a bio featuring credentials—you could find out, for example, if the legal reporter held a law degree. You could also quickly locate copies of earlier work or a list of his or her favorite books. Granted, electronic newspapers posed new challenges. Not all stories lent themselves to multimedia, for example. What if newspapers played down those that didn’t? “If you tried to do that with a lot of news stories,” Julie Powers told me, “you would end up serving the video masters rather than the news functions.” Still, in the end, the reader would enjoy far more choices than before.