The gap in agreement over Web story presentation, wide as it is, does bear some consensus among professionals. The following is a roundup of common suggestions to satisfy the reader (presented in a Web-friendly way):? ? Keep the paragraphs short. This is nothing new to Web writing, but crucial to remember nonetheless. ? ? Put the important stuff first. Otherwise known as the 'Inverted Pyramid' philosophy, this is what generations of journalists have been taught. Unless your story is feature-based, pay close heed to it.

? Don't make your reader work too hard. Even if your story is feature-based, you can't often get away with the long lead-ins that are found in print; you've got to get to the point.

Also, while it's debated just how many times readers are willing to click or scroll, keep it to a minimum. According to Outing, 'If you can get a reader what he/she wants without having to click down more than three levels, you've got a good site.'

? Use links. Judiciously placed, they add depth to a piece. But try to keep as many of them within your site as possible, or you may unintentionally invite the reader to leave. ? One option is to follow the strategy of Liz Garone, editor of the Phoenix New Times' online edition. 'One way that we keep readers from leaving our site is by making links to other sites open up a second separate window,' she said. 'That way they can easily go back and forth.'

? If you've got something other than text to show, use it. For instance, if you've got a big exclusive on Michael Jordan, present the interview transcript to accompany the main story, or add a sound file of the interview. This is where the infinite space of the Web can help.

? Help the reader understand the story. Use a glossary to make sense of complicated terms. It could make the difference in sustaining the reader through the story.

? Treat the reader like he/she's been on the Web before. Don't patronizing him/her by attempting to guide him/her with phrases like 'click here.' The Web isn't that special anymore.

? Know your reader. How to write a piece often depends on your audience. If it's the type that is used to reading long, it may be more willing to sift through a more verbose story. But with other audiences, which are more interested in instant gratification, it's wiser to provide the information as quickly as possible.

? Be accurate. That sounds basic enough, but it can't be over-emphasized on the Web. Credibility is crucial in such a burgeoning field, and just one error could send readers away by the thousands, no matter how long or short the stories are.

Here are three examples of sites and documents that reflect many of these rules: ? CNET's news.com. ? ? Chicago Tribune Internet Edition, which won Editor & Publisher's award for Best Overall U.S. Newspaper Online Service, in February.

? Editor & Publisher Interactive, which publishes exclusively online material along with its magazine stories.   ? Washington Post columnist Margot Williams's 'A primer for a good Web page.'   ? Joshua Quittner's piece entitled 'The Birth of a Way New Journalism,' published in HotWired. --> At the crux of the issue is story presentation -- how long do Web readers want their stories, and what should be done to keep them reading? It's a relatively unanswered question, lacking much formal study, but a crucial one to the future of online content.

And while lots of informed people have lots of informed opinions on the matter, the general scene resembles that of a college freshman on his first date, who wants so much to succeed but just doesn't have the experience to guarantee the right approach.

Now more than ever, Web publishers are in a quandary, thanks to the volatility of a business that has recently forced some of the largest content giants to run for cover. A notable example is Word, which published long, verbose pieces and was well known for it. That is, until its parent company, Icon CMT, canned the site in March because of lagging readership.

Then there's Wired Digital, a venture which was supposed to send Web content into a new stratosphere. But late last year, it reported an annual loss of about $10 million, laid off 20 percent of its staff and switched from providing journalistic content to research assistance, as does its search engine, HotBot.

Some industry insiders say we shouldn't surrender the thought of in-depth Web writing but instead learn from others' mistakes. Ken Layne, editor of his own online news service, TABLOID.net, feels that the wounds are self-inflicted and that news pieces can be in-depth if done right.

'It's to be expected that online news and 'content' sites would publicly weep about story length and Net readers' attention spans,' Layne said. 'But it's not about the scrolling abilities of readers -- it's about quality.'

Traditional media's continued stake in attaining an online presence seems to support Layne's argument. Last summer's study by researcher FIND/SVP found that 62.2 percent of daily newspapers maintained Web versions and 14.6 percent had sites in development. Many aren't backing down yet from presenting serious journalism.

When it comes to winning readers' attention spans, though, online publications -- whether Net-native or derived from print or broadcast -- are fragmented in their modus operandi. Different outlets employ contrasting strategies -- and many aren't based on much formal research.

'The Web allows you to research [how readers use online content] on the fly,' said Travis Smith, Deputy Director of the Los Angeles Times online site, referring to its recent strategy of breaking up sections of stories. 'So we're giving it a shot, and we'll see how people like it.'

One extensive study -- perhaps the only one -- on story length was conducted by Sun Microsystems Distinguished Engineer Jakob Nielsen last summer. His findings would no doubt elicit hisses from many online journalists, because they contradict much of what they're trying to accomplish.

Among Nielsen's data was that users read 25 percent slower on the Web than in print, and that 79 percent of his test users never read word-for-word. He advised Web publishers to use half the word count of a printed piece, including only one idea per paragraph, using bulleted text to increase scanability and providing plenty of links to other sites.

The concept resonates in journalistic academia, as well. On the recently launched Online-Writing e-mail list, Crawford Kilian, Media Technology Chair at Capilano College in Vancouver, Canada, and author of a forthcoming book entitled 'Writing for the Web', delivered his six principles for Web writing. One is: 'Web writing should be the least you could possibly do to deal with the subject.'

Such tactics could all but exterminate the in-depth, investigative pieces that print publications have long delivered. But some, such as Ohio State journalism professor Eric Fredin, aren't convinced.

'If readers don't 'read long,' then why bother with hypermedia?' said Fredin, who wrote an article on Web journalism that appeared in last September's Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly. 'I think that with careful and innovative linking, hypermedia is an ideal place for good investigative stories. For one thing they can stay available for months, even years. You don't have to read or watch the day they're available.'

Fredin doesn't have to convince the Philadelphia Inquirer of that notion. Last fall, the paper ran an exhaustive, 29-part series entitled 'Blackhawk Down'. It centered on reporter Mark Bowden's account of the 1993 U.S. confrontation against Somalian rebels in Mogadishu.

Name a rule, and the Inquirer bucked it. The series ran chapters that contained massive word counts and that scrolled many screens. What with all the video, audio and text links available within the text, the reader could seemingly be enticed to head in two directions at once. There simply hadn't been an online enterprise piece like it.

But the work, produced by Philadelphia Online editor Jennifer Musser, was also a landmark one, as evidenced when it won Best Special Section at Editor & Publisher magazine's Best Online Newspaper Awards in February. It averaged 42,000 page views a day -- more than any other Inquirer story -- at one point forcing an Inquirer computer to crash from all the hits.

Even Musser, who feels that the series wouldn't have worked on the Web without the added multimedia features, admits she was headed into uncertain grounds.

'For us, this was an experiment,' she said. 'I was released from my regular duties to work on this thing, and that had never happened before. We didn't set out saying, 'Let's change the world.' It just sort of developed like that. And I don't know if it did change the world, but I'd like to think that people look at it as a good example of what can be done.

'I've been to a couple of conferences this year and they've told me [the series] raised the bar. We could have bombed. We were really lucky.'

For once, a consensus on presenting online stories? Hardly. Bill McMichael, an investigative reporter for the Newport News, Va., Daily Press, who also publishes his stories in full online, specifically mentioned the 'Blackhawk Down' series as an example of online journalism gone amok.

'It was an interesting and obviously experimental presentation,' said McMichael, who adds such subtler Web enhancements as interview transcripts to his stories. 'But it was also a dense one, as well -- sort of like an over-designed page. I found it hard to get through the text -- you really had to concentrate.'

To that, Musser responded, 'You don't have to click on [the multimedia]. I understand that school of thought, but that's ridiculous. That's what the medium is about, jumping around from place to place. You don't have to waste your time waiting for the weather.'

Debate abounds on story length and presentation, be it in newsrooms or at trade gatherings, such as E&P's Interactive Newspapers conference held in February, in Seattle. Among the panels was one regarding story lengths, at which professionals debated the claim that shorter is better.

If the controversy simply regarded word counts, though, maybe it wouldn't be as perplexing as it is. Within the length debate are separate debates that must be factored.

'Are you a site that attracts mostly surfers? Then you need to keep your presentation tight,' said Steve Outing, president of Planetary News, an interactive media research firm. 'If you have a site that caters to folks looking for specific niche information, then length isn't so much a factor. There's so much variety in Web publishing. You can't generalize about such things as recommended length unless you want to narrow it down to a specific type of Web site.

'However, as a general rule, keep it shorter. Especially on the Web, you can't go wrong following that advice.'

Belief systems among those in the know are much like telephones -- everyone's got one. Fredin is a believer in 'serendipity', a concept that he mentions repeatedly in his article. Serendipity involves offering the reader pleasant surprises by using glossaries to better explain and providing in-site, not extraneous, links to give more options within the story.

And while many Web publishers agree with such tenets, they still vary greatly in how to apply them because they disagree on the exact purpose of the Web. Some believe that writing online is no different than writing for print -- if it's good, people will read it even if it's long. Others believe readers are often in search of certain facts and little more.

'I feel that news Web sites are, by definition, much more like tapping into a database than reading a print publication,' said Julie Hirschfeld, a reporter for Congressional Quarterly, a site that covers government and politics. 'In general, they are usually akin to a research tool.'

Said Layne, on the other hand, 'That's like saying, 'People don't want to call anyone with a telephone, they just want the phone numbers.' The searching and researching capabilities aren't worth a damn if those links lead nowhere. Content -- Christ, I hate that term -- is King.'

And so the debate continues. Considering the infancy of Web content, it's doubtful to quell anytime soon. As many burgeoning sites as there are, many are nowhere close to realizing the Web's capacity as a messenger. Even such simple innovations as links are omitted completely by some sites, let alone adjustments in story length.? About the only sure thing is that no one knows for sure. For instance, some of the mass pessimism floating in the content community earlier this year seems to be abating. In late April, Word was reborn when it was bought for $2 million by a Houston food-processing firm.

Meanwhile, Wired Digital appeared to raise itself from its financial doldrums when Wired Ventures sold its magazine, Wired, to Conde Nast Publications at a reported price of up to $80 million. Wired Digital has earned 113 percent more during the year's first quarter than the one before and is expected to record a profit by year's end.

'Everyone's just trying to find a revenue model that works, and the experimentation is bound to cause fluctuations in staff both up and down over time,' Outing said. 'I don't make much of it. In general, the future is bright long term.'

Undoubtedly, much trial-and-error is likely to precede any consensus that exists in more traditional media. But just as those traditional media survived doomsday prophecies, so can the Web as it evolves. Just like that college freshman, it just has to keep trying.

'Time spent will depend upon developing hypermedia formats that are just starting to be formed,' Fredin said. 'And time spent will depend upon the expectations of the users as to how to deal with a hyperstory.'