3. The Great Web Rush
January 1995 to May 1995

While online life progressed in the attic, Scott Woelfel made the official leap to editor in chief at CNN Interactive, taking up residence in an equally obscure residence known as "The World Under the Staircase."

In early 1995, this special place was rife with talk of pressed discs. The third disc, "CNN Time Capsule 1994: Year in Review" had been released in January. "We had lots of ideas for CD-ROMs," says Woelfel. They ended up focusing on a 1995 Time Capsule and "Hot Spots," a look at troubled regions around the world. This would later become "Faces of Conflict".

The body count grew to around 30 as producers, associate producers and editors were hired to expand both the CompuServe offerings and produce the CD-ROM. The World Under the Staircase moved to more spacious digs.

Sometime in early spring, the Web hit them -- albeit gently.

"The thing about CompuServe that was great," says Woelfel, "was that you could update constantly -- that's what CNN was -- but it wasn't available to everyone. What solved all the problems was the Web. It could be endlessly updated, and what it couldn't match in a CD-ROM, it made up for in immediacy." A disenchanted graduate student named Rob Leary was hired to serve as web master. Meanwhile, Jeff Garrard, who'd come over from CNN's Science unit to do a CD-ROM, led up the Web editorial effort.

"It was about mid-May when Harry Motro decided to pull the trigger on the web site," says Garrard.

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