Dial 900-Newsroom. Now we know we're not the only journalists who fear that the fax machine may one day spew forth a deadly barrage of faxes a la Mt. Vesuvius. Such fear
escalated to full-scale phobia at The Orlando Sentinel. More than five years ago, the daily began charging a fee to PR pros who contribute to the constant stream of faxes.
Its Web site cautions, "Press releases can be ... faxed to 1-900-288-NEWS (a minimum $2 charge will be billed to the sender's phone)." Evidently, the scheme works. "We recently
discovered the number of callers had decreased no longer making this profitable," says Lee Huber, the Sentinel's manager for editorial administration. The newspaper plans
to replace the 900-number with a computer fax line that will dump faxes into an e-mailbox to be sorted by Sentinel clerks. For now, stick to email. A listing of editors and
contact information is available at http://www.orlandosentinel.com/about/orl-newsroom.htmlstory.
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