Just as important, however, the _N & O_ faced strong competition for advertisers and readers. Yes, the Net shrank distances and gave smaller companies some new marketing opportunities. But as shown by Time Warner’s giant electronic newsstand, it could also create some good synergies for media conglomerates offering package deals to national advertisers. In certain respects—hardly all—readers also benefited. I could key in “Carly Simon,” for example, and see any stories that might have appeared about her, not only in _Time_ but also in _Entertainment Weekly_ or _People_. Frank Daniels could bring together wire service news and offbeat items from technical publications and others. But in the future he couldn’t match the brand appeal of corporations such as Time Warner. Daniels had a right to be proud of his technological accomplishments, of course. But from now on, assuming that he stayed, as he apparently would for the moment, he would be an employee rather than a member of the owning family. Forget the Third Wave talk of Net saving us all from conglomerates. We could all have our own home pages on the World Wide Web, of course, and maybe put out little magazines; and IUMA-style startups could always use the new technology to startle the Goliaths—and in the end, exceptions notwithstanding, the Internet did foster diversity. Clearly, though, it was far from an all-purpose savior for the _N & O_s of the world. However powerful in North Carolina, the Raleigh newspaper was hardly on an equal footing when it competed against the very largest media organizations. As if to underscore that point, eight huge newspaper publishers had banded together earlier that spring to form New Century Network, a club for the big boys on the Net. Some people wondered if the giants might lose out in the end—readers wanted to tour the Web themselves, not just confine themselves to material favored by newspaper coalitions. And maybe New Century wouldn’t end up so exclusive after all. Also, advertisers might prefer to sprinkle their cash around the Web rather than focus it on newspaper chains—they could pay for links to their pages from many sites without much ado. The natural economies of the Net might yet win out over the business plans of the giants. Still, for the moment, publishers such as Gannett and the Washington Post Company were apparently setting the tone of New Century itself. The 185 New Century papers claimed more than 23 million paying readers. “New Century might raise antitrust questions,” wrote Rory O’Connor, a reporter for the _San Jose Mercury News_, part of Knight-Ridder, a chain in New Century. Peter Winter, interim chief executive of New Century, said the publishers were “comfortable with our conformance to antitrust statutes.”[4.31]