1989 was a bit before my time, Usenet-wise (I was
still hitting the BBS scene
 at the time), but around '93-94 when I got my first Unix shell account, I
 recall using nn, but not terribly often (I mean, gopher was _right there_ for
 the taking!). 
Another vote for nn (and, for that matter, Gopher).
I still use nn on AIX but I don't read a lot of Usenet these days.
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http://www.cameronkaiser.com/ --
  Cameron Kaiser * Floodgap Systems * 
www.floodgap.com * ckaiser at 
floodgap.com
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