There’s a lot of talk today about how the new big screen Kindle could help save the bleeding newspaper industry. As we laid out last night, that is complete BS. But I think it’s worth revisiting a video we posted a few months back about the topic. It’s from 1981 (incidentally, the year I was born), showing that newspapers seemed to have some idea about what the future of their industry would be.
It’s a common misconception that newspapers are simply late to the Internet game. As this video shows, some of them (including some of the major ones now failing) have been thinking about this stuff for 28 years. That is a long, long time. Towards the end of the video, the local news reporter says, “the day will come when we get all our newspapers and magazines by home computer, but that’s a few years off.” And this was at a time when hilariously, it took 2 hours to receive an entire newspaper over the modems of the day, and it cost $5 an hour to transfer that data — at the time newspapers were $0.20. Despite all of that, the local reporters were smart enough to see that the writing was still on the wall.
The beginning of the video is perhaps the most direct and interesting: “Imagine, if you will, sitting down to your morning coffee, turning on your home computer to read the day’s newspaper. Well, it’s not a far-fetched as it may seem. In fact, both local San Francisco papers are investing a lot of money to try and get a service just like that started.” What happened?
The video ends with the local news reporter saying, “so for the moment, at least, this fellow [a newspaper delivery guy], isn’t worried about being out of job.” That fellow is unfortunately very likely out of a job now.
[thanks Kelly]
Um …
http://www.tech...see-this-video/
Thanks Dan, forgive me, wasn’t around back then
But yeah, I’ve reworked rather than removed as I think it’s more pertinent now given today’s news.
I want to go back to 1981 and invent internet pr0n.
It’ll be ASCII you fool…CGA was hardly that good and it would be two color like a halloween sex dream.
Also does predict a blog called TC, in 2009
MG, you’re slowly becoming my favorite writer in TechCrunch (all of you are great though).
Are you aware that you just recycled a previous post written in TechCrunch 2-3 months ago?
Yeah my bad, before my time
But I reworked slightly, as I think it’s particularly meaningful for today’s news. Thanks!
Its not like newspapers didn’t see this coming, it was inevitable. i do remember taking a field trip when i was a kid to a local newspaper office and seeing their news arrive via a small monochromatic monitor sitting in the middle of an office.
Even as a kid i thought to myself, why don’t we all have one of those in our houses!
Flash to today and boy how things have changed!
MG Recycler.
Pfft. That’s nothing. These guys saw it coming in 1895.
I own to you frankly that I do not believe (and the progress of electricity and modern mechanism forbids me to believe) that Gutenberg’s invention can do otherwise than sooner or later fall into desuetude as a means of current interpretation of our mental products… . Our grandchildren will no longer trust their works to this somewhat antiquated process, now become very easy to replace by phonography.
Other than the phonography point, I think they nailed it.
Some how the posts on TC that I’m interested in keep ending up being written by you MG, kudos.
As the business manager of my college paper I’ve only seen an increase in the prominence of campus news. Though not impossible, it’s difficult to replicate the experience of picking up a paper as you walk in to class so that you can read articles written by peers while you wait, or play sudoku when the professor is boring. Of course all this can be done on laptops, and I have noticed an increased number of students using laptops in class rather than notebooks. Yet our pickup rates have actually increased. There’s something to be said for even college students being behind the tech wave.
Kudos to Richard Halloran for being a credible early adopter! How the profile of early adopters have changed though!
Strangely enough…after graduating from H.S. in…1981… I actually saw reports like this. Eventually, I went to work for CompuServe (who brought most of this technology to life at the time), and today…I own a Kindel.
I still get the NYT on Sunday delivery…but I am not sure for how much longer. It would simply be so much less WASTE…though, I admit I prefer the feel of the paper…I suppose all of us (old) people are just going to have to get used to it.
It’s pretty easy to go back and find examples of single stories that made a point. Stories are routinely crafted to make a point, especially utilizing the old chestnut “time will tell” at the end. Does this really demonstrate that the industry as a whole knew the direction the Internet would take it? That doesn’t seem plausible. Just because there is a technology that accomplishes a certain task (say, news delivery through NNTP) doesn’t make it obvious that this, among all other possibilities, would co-evolve with society to be the next mass medium. Also, let’s not forget that the web itself was still some ten years away in 1981.
2 to 3 thousand home computers in the Bay Area! I do remember CompuServe defining the total market by the modem penetration numbers.
yeah…? my homoerectus relative thought about it before these guys did. Question is ‘Is Madorch aware?’.
I’m hoping the news delivery boy in this story is not really out of a job since he’s probably about my age, and I’m too old to be delivering papers. Maybe he’s working for Google.