Comments on: Newspapers By Computer Still A Few Years Off In 1981

By: Brenda

Brenda — Sat, 09 May 2009 07:25:32 +0000

Boring!

By: Phillip

Phillip — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 04:55:08 +0000

This conversation isn’t over! And, it’s certainly not “over a cliff”! Come on Web 2.0ers! Let’s get talking! For real!

By: Phillip

Phillip — Sat, 11 Apr 2009 22:03:59 +0000

Phyllis is right. This conversation went right over a cliff.

By: Phyllis

Phyllis — Sat, 11 Apr 2009 05:16:03 +0000

Wow. Did this conversation fall off a cliff.

By: Phyllis

Phyllis — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 05:36:43 +0000

Hey! What happened to Billy’s message regarding Timmy’s messages disappearing from this page?

By: Teegan Photography » Blog Archive » inspiration (v)

Teegan Photography » Blog Archive » inspiration (v) — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 14:21:44 +0000

[...] Technology – truthfully I feel so blessed to live in this time in history with so very much info and art and news and images available so readily … [...]

By: Mike Shipman

Mike Shipman — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 04:01:00 +0000

That looks like my computer and modem. I guess it’s about time I upgraded.

By: dug.

dug. — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 00:52:14 +0000

was that matthew broderick and ally sheedy in the background plotting world domination???

By: Aimee A

Aimee A — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 21:36:18 +0000

Crazy to see this now… I wonder what people thought while they were watching this in 1981!?!?!?!

And the last quote… “this guy does not have to worry about losing his job.” referring to the newspaper salesman! That gets me!

By: Nostalgia da lama « projeto_secreto

Nostalgia da lama « projeto_secreto — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 18:41:08 +0000

[...] pessoa que se identificou como ciadefoto deixou aqui uma sugestão tecnológia interessantíssima: esse vídeo de 1981 sobre o primeiro jornal online. Adorei. O telefone vermelho sendo conectado para receber o texto em apenas umas 3 horas é [...]

By: Rep Blogs » World Wide Web, circa 1981CantonRep.com - Canton, OH - CantonRep.com

Mon, 02 Feb 2009 16:51:11 +0000

[...] Some papers tried some kind of digital delivery of information much earlier. Check out this 1981 television news report about an early newspaper experiment. It’s not really the Web as we know it, but it’s [...]

By: 1981 News Report: “News By Computer Still A Few Years Off” « On the Water

Sat, 31 Jan 2009 22:29:09 +0000

[...] Thanks to A Photo Editor [...]

By: Andrew H

Andrew H — Sat, 31 Jan 2009 14:51:53 +0000

Thanks for posting this amazing video clip. Once upon a time life was so simple, and todays commonplace technology was news-worthy future gazing.
One can only wonder what state newspapers would be in today without the rush to the ‘net? An industry shooting itself in the foot I wonder?

By: jeanne

jeanne — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 17:14:52 +0000

i think that guy on the street is plenty worried now.
priceless. love the dial up phone. and it only took two hours to transmit!

By: Debra Weiss

Debra Weiss — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 16:19:37 +0000

What’s even more sad is the statement from David Cole who says “we’re trying to figure out what it’s going to mean to the editors, reporters and to the home user.” No where in this piece is the word photography ever mentioned.

Debra Weiss

By: Beverly

Beverly — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 15:28:23 +0000

It is actually kind of sad in light of how much the newspaper industry is suffering because of the internet. They never thought of monetizing it back then because it was a curiosity, then when it all happened so fast, the newspapers couldn’t be agile enough. It is going to be interesting to see how it all pans out.

What a fantastic find.

By: A Photo Editor - Newspapers By Computer Still A Few Years Off In 1981 « Bloog

Fri, 30 Jan 2009 11:06:10 +0000

[...] Originally posted here: A Photo Editor – Newspapers By Computer Still A Few Years Off In 1981 [...]

By: Giodb

Giodb — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 08:28:50 +0000

@Steve, you just put the finger on the problem. “print publications can’t compete with the internet for immediacy.” That’s so true! That’s why media should change and offer what the internet can’t afford. I live in France and I observed a big change in the newspaper Liberation. The internet version is trying new things (even selling low price design furniture : people vote put their name on the furniture they would like to buy and the ones that have the necessary hits are produced to the number of clicks so to have no waist and so better prices)and so on. In the print issue you have more in depth reportages that need a professional journalist approach, time and money that you can’t read anywhere else.So if you want to read it… you buy the newspaper. Seams easy no?

By: Thomas Pickard

Thomas Pickard — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 06:11:21 +0000

$10 for the electronic version and 20 cents (!) for the street version…

That was GOLD!

By: Paul Jones

Paul Jones — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 20:49:00 +0000

“For the moment, at least, this fellow (at a news stand) doesn’t have to worry about losing his job” The moment has come albeit 25+ years later.

By: Alexis Evanoff

Alexis Evanoff — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 20:44:31 +0000

@Steve Skoll, I aint gonna lie. I still do that… the screen hurts my eyes after a while…

By: Matt Mendelsohn

Matt Mendelsohn — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 20:22:53 +0000

“Of the estimated two to three thousand home computer owners in the Bay area…”

Well, that says it all, doesn’t it?

This was a priceless find. Thanks for sharing!

Matt, resuming his game of Pong.

By: Steve Skoll

Steve Skoll — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 19:45:39 +0000

“…can copy it and save it onto paper… which I think is the future…”

Paper is the future! That’s a relief.

-Steve

By: Steve

Steve — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 18:15:48 +0000

It’s easy to get stuck on the internet angle here, I think. And it is odd to think that the newspaper industry could be transformed so drastically in less than 30 years. But the change that’s really made it possible for online publications to beat the hell out of print happened a lot more quickly than that.

One of the big reasons that the newspaper and magazine industries are getting killed by the online pubs is the ‘coming of age’ of digital photography technology in just the last ten years.

Ten years ago, I was managing the scanning department for a pre-press house in Connecticut. As recently as that, almost all of the photos that appeared in print were shot on film and scanned–either at a pre-press house or by an in-house pre-press department. Digital cameras existed, but they weren’t very common, and models that could deliver the quality and resolution needed for print were extremely expensive and mostly used for studio work. Add to this the fact that film scanners was also prohibitively expensive at the time; the Linotype-Hell drum scanner we used cost close to $200,000 and even our Scitex flatbed scanner would’ve been beyond what the average person could afford. My point being that, if you had a magazine or newspaper in those days you also needed a pre-press house to scan the photographers’ chromes and get them into print. That was just how it was. There was competition between this magazine and that, or this newspaper and that one, but print media pretty much had the market cornered because no one could do it faster, and very few could afford to do it at all.

I remember standing around by the drum scanner one night, waiting for a guy to get off a plane with chromes that had been shot at a golf tournament in the U.K. somewhere. It seems incredible now, but we were waiting for the chromes to arrive so we could scan them, retouch and color correct them, and get them into a magazine that would appear on newstands by the end of the week.

Fast forward to today, people who shoot film are becoming about as rare as people who shot digital tens years ago. And images from golf tournaments in the U.K. are on a magazine’s site shortly after the match is over, if not while the game’s still going on. Clearly, print publications can’t compete with the internet for immediacy. Who wants to pay to read about something that happened days or weeks ago, when you can read about and see stuff that’s still going on for free?

Steve

By: Clif Page

Clif Page — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 15:47:23 +0000

To put this in context, the Macintosh computer was still three years away from being introduced.
Heck, USA Today was still a year away from being printed.
Newspapers still made major money in 1981. They could afford to experiment then.
As for the dial-up technology, little else was available commercially.

By: dude

dude — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 15:32:58 +0000

I love that it takes 5 hours to download the TEXT of the newspaper. Fantastic.

In the future, my kids will find it hilarious about how long it takes to load that YouTube video on my first generation iPhone.

By: elizabeth

elizabeth — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 15:15:13 +0000

this is absolutely amazing. and only 28 years ago. can you even imagine the next…

By: Ramin Talaie

Ramin Talaie — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 14:58:21 +0000

Great video find! I like the fact that the “science” editor did the reporting. Did you note when he said “we are not doing this to make money?” Gosh, I wish they were!

By: James Jones

James Jones — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 14:48:41 +0000

makes you think about any half-baked technology that we may overlook right now, which is prepping to revolutionize the world within the next generation.

By: Internet Newspapers (in 1981) | NSLog();

Internet Newspapers (in 1981) | NSLog(); — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 14:32:37 +0000

[...] From A Photo Editor. [...]