August 18, 1997

Serious television fans turn to Internet and each other's creativity to resolve popular prime-time cliffhangers on their own during summer rerun season; emerging electronic genre, known as 'fan fiction,' has spawned hundreds of World Wide Web sites and Internet discussion groups; photo (M)

Gulf is growing among television broadcasters about how they will use second channels loaned to them for digital broadcasting starting next year; ABC Television Network says it sees no way to make money from high-definition television and instead wants to use digital channels to broadcast lower-definition pay-TV programs; CBS and NBC say they will air high-definition programs; Federal Communications Commmission earlier rejected plea from television networks to require broadcasters to offer high-definition programming; graph (M)

Marion S Barry, mayor of Washington, DC, for 15 of last 19 years, has been reduced to little more than titular leader whom many residents blame for city's downfall; legislative action since Republicans won control of Congress in 1994 has shifted his powers to financial control board created by Congress to correct decades of inefficiency in city government; photos (M)

Rutgers University student is raped and nearly strangled with cord of an electric fan at her off-campus apartment (New Jersey Daily Briefing) (S)

Publishers are cutting back on midlist authors, whose books usually sell modestly and names lack marquee value; such writers are turning to university and small presses to publish works in return for very small advances, or they are writing under new names or publishing themselves; photos; tables (M)