TV NEWS presenter Carol Barnes was left waiting in the pouring rain outside a London telephone booth while I made a call to my newspaper to file my story.

That was 25 years ago and it still makes me chuckle to think just how far technology has progressed during my career.

I'd been working on some major headline-grabbing murders for a local paper in north London, and in those days, no one had mobile phones.

I remember looking outside the box and seeing Barnes getting soaked as I filed my humble copy.

It wouldn't happen in these days of dazzling high-tech where everything from stories to pictures to videos is transported wirelessly across the ether.

I almost feel Dickensian thinking back. But there are darker secrets in the recesses of my ancient memory.

Yes, there was the time the negatives for the Bucks Free Press' front page fell off the courier's bike, and into the road, as he left our offices. He then drove on obliviously with the rest of the paper to the printers.

The BFP was only saved by the actions of the company van driver who was following behind and spotted the front page of that week's edition lying in the gutter.

You see, in those days we had to physically drive the paper's negs to the print centre - instead of sending it electronically. This often meant a trip of several hours on the congested M25 to Brighton.

If you made a mistake, or wanted to update to the story, you had to call out another courier who would race against time to beat the press deadline.

On one Thursday night at 9pm, I received a call that the front page masthead of the BFP's Marlow edition was missing at the print centre in Worcester.

This meant that the edition would have to be effectively scrapped unless a new negative reached there before the presses rolled at 11pm.

I couldn't summon a courier so in desperation I grabbed the replacement neg, picked up Mrs Editor's Chair and drove all the way to Worcester myself in thick fog.

Amazingly, we made it with seconds to spare - but then the advantage of this technologically-backward world was that speed cameras had yet to appear on every street corner.

Nowadays, the process of getting a page to a print centre anywhere in the world is a matter of a few quick mouse clicks on a computer.

So why, I hear you cry, am I regressing into this self-indulgent nostalgic ramble?

It's because the world is moving and changing again, so fast that I don't think many people appreciate how radical the revolution really is.

About a week ago, the South Bucks Star quietly introduced its latest innovation - a totally electronic version of the paper. The Star can now be seen in its entirety on this website - just look for the icon on the front page.

Every page of this week's paper should be visible today in PDF format. The technology even allows readers to hear the unmistakable sound of pages being turned.

The Star was one of the first local newspapers in the UK to go on to the internet in the 1990s. But being on the net until now simply meant readers could access the stories and pictures in a web-friendly format.

The electronic version of The Star, however, presents every page online just as you would see it in print.

The repercussions will be enormous - a paperless paper. The green lobby will love it; the print puritans will see it as the beginning of the end of centuries of tradition.

I am continually asked if the web will kill newspapers?

There is only one answer to this in my opinion: Who cares?

Yes, who cares if the internet kills off print?

I do, but only because I was brought up in the world of print journalism and ink runs through my veins, along with the Special Brew that gets me through the nights after press deadline.

In reality, though, it doesn't matter if print dies in favour of electronic journalism. It doesn't matter if people read stories in newspapers or on their TV sets or on their watches.

What matters is that journalists provide news in the format people wish to receive it in. I'm still relatively young and cannot believe how my industry has changed in my career. In another 25 years' time, I'll have only just retired but I cannot begin to imagine what more changes lie in store.

Technology will no doubt have moved on leaps and bounds, but the rules of basic good journalism and story-telling will stay the same.

And no doubt I'll still be boring readers with how I once forced that Carol Barnes to wait in the rain for me outside a phone box.

1:37pm Friday 9th November 2007

Print   Email this   Comment