Articles by BillFrench

You might recall my assertion that newspapers were coming back big-time, but without the paper (and ink). Here’s more proof…

Their thin flexible, newspaper size, totally portable Treeless Display, made with patent pending technology, receives the newspaper electronically and displays it with the same layout, headlines, columns, pictures, ads, text, and picture quality. Alternatively, for those who prefer, the Treeless Glasses display permits viewing the paper by using a pair of electronic “reading glasses.� With either display system, your newspaper appears identical to the printed pages. They capture the complete newspaper layout, just as it is sent to the printing presses, and transmit it to each subscriber electronically, using cell phone, satellite, internet or other modes.

I tried to find a web site on this company, but more important than this particular instance is the reality that this is about to become a reality. What will the printing and paper world look like in just five years if the cost of digital paper approximates the cost of cutting down trees?

I’m looking forward to the day when newsprint is on it’s last leg and forests need to be cut because we have too many trees.

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It’s the ink manufacturers that should be worried.

As I’ve said before, I’m not skilled in the professions of journalism and public relations. In fact, I seldom read stories about the seeming demise of journalism because of the Web and other technologies like blogs. For whatever reason, I found this article (The New Old Journalism) compelling enough to lead me to this article (The Migration). I have a hunch I’ll learn much more from your comments.

Because whether we’re talking today or 10 years ago, it’s not the medium, it’s the reporter. — Adam L. Penenberg

Throughout this read, I kept thinking about digital paper - and if we had a cheap source of digital paper (cheaper than real paper), that could be “printed on” reliably and at near-zero cost, what would the world of news be like? How would we get our news? How would we interact with news information?

I suspect we wouldn’t run to 75 pound monitors to read what interests us. We wouldn’t wait until we hit Starbucks (and a hot-spot) to get the daily dose of sports scores from a laptop. Instead, we’d read it like previous generations read it - by opening our “newspaper” - the one that was created based on our interests and beamed to the nano-thin, durable tranluscent pages in 16 trillion colors with photos and embedded high-speed video snippets regardless of where the paper lay. We’d come to rely on this “paper” to bring us everything we enjoyed about being informed.

The digital domain of paper, coupled with advances in device awareness, and translucent display technology will once again make newspapers the most prefered way to stay informed. When Penenberg said “it’s not the medium, it’s the reporter”, he was right and will continue to be right long after the last drop of ink has been applied to the last sheet of newsprint made from the last tree cut.

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