One of the great advantages was that instead of journalists - www.533chestnut.com

One of the great advantages was that instead of journalists having to plough through yards and yards of dusty cuttings, they could simply call the information they needed to screen. The transformation from an on-line service to disc, using BRS Software, was an easy one. Information then became available at people's fingertips and when Mr Fallon launched the Echo on CD-Rom he said:' Let us be in no doubt as to the importance of this new resource for schools, business users and the community.' He said that the National Curriculum insisted that all children study newspapers to develop a critical understanding of the media and the role it played in the community. Two pupils from Macmillan College in Middlesbrough showed Mr Fallon how they used the CDRom to search for the latest information about the fall of the Berlin Wall, the construction of the Channel Tunnel, and pollution in Teesside for their school projects. That first CD-Rom contained all the articles published in The Northern Echo from November 1988 to July 1990, a total of around 100,000 files.