Readers get expanded coverage of stories, events and can even listen to talks in streaming audio at Bulletin Online, writes ALFRED CHAN

Not too long ago, media doomsayers were proclaiming that the "digital revolution" marked the start of the demise of the printed word. Not only were newspapers and magazines at threat, books were also destined to become museum display pieces, victims of the electronic age.

The script of this saga reads like a science-fiction thriller where machines start to take over the world, or in this case the media empire. In theory, printing newspapers or books online sounds like a stroke of genius. Publishers can do away with their biggest cost, printing, which benefits the environment and allows "customers" to read up-to-the-minute news on any PC screen that is connected to the Internet.

Human nature, however, threw this scenario out of the window. Poring over the paper in the mornings is one of life's little pleasures. So too is thumbing through magazines and browsing bookstores, and we are not about to give that up.

Now, online versions of newspapers and magazines enhance and promote their printed parent, and Bulletin Online, which took its first steps online in 1999 with a single story each month before being "published" in its entirety in 2000, is no exception.

One of the most used features of Bulletin Online is its search function, which allows members to search and access articles dating back to 1999 free of charge. But it is perhaps the expanded coverage of stories that is the most appealing to the 800 or so readers who visit Bulletin Online every day.

"Budget constraints limit the number of pages that we can print, so we have to restrict the number and length of articles that we publish each month," says The Bulletin's Managing Editor Malcolm Ainsworth. "With Bulletin Online, we can combine reports on HKGCC events with Chamber in Action -- which might include full text of speeches, additional notes and reports, et cetera -- so that readers very often have complete coverage of every event which takes place in the Chamber."