Humor: Falling off the end of the newspaper world

Falling off the end of the newspaper world

Claude was the picture of activity as he tap-tap-tapped away on his old Remington typewriter.

The boss was pleased with Claude. He was a real, live old-style newspaper reporter, with a press sign in his hat, and more often than not, a cigarette in his mouth.

Once in a while, Claude paused and chuckled about the ways things had gone.

"You dinosaur," a younger workmate had once taunted him. "Don't you know that your day is coming to an end? Soon there will be no more typewriters, just computers."

Claude did not believe a word of it. "We've been doing things this way for years and years," he said. "Why on earth would we want to change?"

He came into the industry as a copy boy when there were Linotype operators, hot metal plates and rows and rows of telex machines bringing in news from all over the world.

Now they were talking computers and silent fax machines.

More than that, some soothsayers were predicting the end of newspapers as we knew them.

"Paper is a finite resource," one upstart had said. "Have you seen the amount of newsprint this paper goes through? Multiply that by every newspaper in the world, and you don't have to be too clever to realise that one day someone will say: 'That's it - we cannot afford to cut down one more tree to produce newspapers.'"

"That's nonsense," Claude countered. "What about recycling. A lot of newsprint is recycled these days."

"Yes," said the upstart. "But when the resource gets scarce enough, don't you think that there will be greater demands for recycled paper."

"Greater than newspapers? I doubt it," said the old-timer.

"What about toilet paper?" asked the upstart.

"So you think newspapers will die out completely?" Claude asked, incredulously.

"No, I think they'll all become electronic - on the Internet," said the upstart.

"The Internet? What a lot of hogwash! There's plenty of high-profile people who have already shot that idea down in flames," Claude said.

"Yeah," said the upstart. "And who are they? Mostly people who head print organisations. What else would you expect them to say?"

"I don't know anyone who is going to sit in front of a computer terminal and try to wade through a newspaper," Claude said.

"That's because you're thinking of desk top computers and print newspaper designs," the upstart said. "Think about the portable devices of the future. They'll be cheap and efficient, with great resolution, in-built dictionaries, maps and super quick search features to track down the kinds of things you want to read. Or you can browse everything, via short summary pages which will link to the full reports if you want them."

"It's not going to happen, son," Claude said with a laugh. "They'll never do away with newspapers."

That was a few years before Claude started at his new job.

Now he worked as a museum exhibit.

He tap-tap-tapped away on his typewriter on sheets of toilet paper all day as gawking people filed past his window and peered in.

Once in a while, he'd hear a kid say: "Cool! Is that how newspapers were really produced in the olden days?"

Then they'd move on to the next display, the flat-earth believers.

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