Everest Tragedy Puts Spotlight On Outside Online -- Breaking News Builds Magazine's Reputation

On two occasions, tragedy struck as climbers scaled massive mountains. Both times, Bellevue-based Outside Online broke the harsh news to the world.

When the electronic magazine reported the news of Scottish climber Alison Hargreaves' death last August, it was treated with skepticism by traditional news gatherers.

"For the next day (news organizations) were questioning our legitimacy," recalled Jeff Herr, Outside Online's managing editor. "They kind of dismissed our content as not news."

This weekend, when a severe blizzard on Mount Everest claimed the lives of expedition leader Scott Fischer of Seattle, Doug Hansen of Renton and six other climbers, news organizations quoted Outside Online.

What a difference a few months can make.

"I'm not having to answer the question `Well, who are you?' Now, those questions don't seem to come," Herr said.

The online venture is a partnership between Outside magazine and Starwave Corp., owned by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen. Articles from the trendy, New Mexico-based magazine make up 30 percent of the site's offerings. The rest is original content produced by a dozen Starwave editorial staffers and a score of correspondents unfettered by the three-month lead time its print counterpart faces.

The World Wide Web site logs about 100,000 hits a day from visitors looking for news, travel information, outdoor-gear reviews and events from the Tour de France to Ironman competitions.

In its 15-month existence, Outside Online has replaced key editors and tinkered with its content, making a few minor tweaks and one major streamlining last June.

"We sat down and said, `What are the things we can do really well?' and started focusing in on those," said Tonya Antonucci, product manager. Outside Online's readers "love the outdoors," she said, "but the reality is five days out of the week they're in the office. . . . They want to be somewhere where they can talk about (the outdoors) and learn and share experiences."

To that end, the magazine sent a correspondent to Mount Everest at the height of the climbing season. Jane Bromet sent back tapes by carrier to Katmandu for overnight mail to Seattle. (The photograph of Fischer that accompanies the site's story about the deadly storm, for instance, was shot during the expedition and added to the site by techies in Bellevue.)

Bromet also filed dispatches by fax from a Mount Everest base camp. Faxing the missives - sometimes handwritten, sometimes typed on a laptop - gave Bromet time to capture the feel of the place, the people and their feelings, Herr said, "rather than trying to rattle off everything on the phone." She has since returned to Seattle.

Outside Online also got calls directly from Mount Everest by at least four climbers using solar-powered, satellite phones. The calls ring directly at Herr's desk.

The high-tech phone calls cost about $5 to $20 a minute but provided the freshest news. Ironically, it was Fischer who used the "sat phone" last August to pass on word that Hargreaves perished in an avalanche near the K-2 summit.

"We can do daily news very well," Antonucci said. "We're giving people reasons to come to the service every day. They can glean information. They can have fun. They can get news that they need. We're trying to build a more complete experience that way."

What makes the online version different is the so-called added value.

Interviews using the satellite phones are simultaneously recorded on a digital audio deck attached to Herr's phone. If the voice quality of the interview is good, tiny snippets are converted into a audio file to be added to the site. In some cases, an entire conversation can be captured.

Most recently, Outside Online added a place for a growing list of visitors to add their thoughts about the Mount Everest tragedy. Herr said the publication offered a similar discussion space when Hargreaves died.

"To that end, we can serve as a gathering place," he said. "I think there's a cathartic value to that - beyond just conveying information."

Outside Online's "Summit Journal 1996" site is at: http://outside.starwave.com/outside/online/peaks