The Top Five Technology Stories of The Past Five Years
by Clark Robinson
Although the media have always been fond of making lists, the advent of the year 2000 brought such scribbling to a near frenzy. A&E had its “Biography of the Millennium.” Life magazine published a special double issue on the top 100 events and the 100 most important people of the millennium. AP had its 100 top news stories and 100 greatest athletes of the century. And the list goes on and on. (Oh no—another list!)
Maybe I’m more influenced by the media than I’d like to admit. When it came time to celebrate TechNews’ fifth anniversary, all I could think to do was make a list of the top five newspaper technology stories of the last five years. That, and sponsor a free pizza lunch for NAA staffers.
Creating the list was harder than you might imagine. The problem was not in generating ideas, but in narrowing them down to only five. To aid my quest, I thumbed through the 30 issues we’ve published over the last five years (proudly displayed on the facing page). I also consulted our 1999 readership survey, two reader fax polls, and the transcripts of the expert-panel roundtables we conduct annually at NEXPO®. So, in a sense, what I’m about to tell you is a really only a reflection of what you’ve already told me.
Honorable Mentions
Here’s where I give myself a break. The following stories were monumentally important to our industry, but didn’t quite make it into the top five:
• Newspapers Devote Massive Resources to Solving Y2K Problem: The Y2K bug ate into budgets and staff time, delaying other projects.
• Color Capacity Goes Up, Quality Improves: The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Washington Post and countless smaller newspapers introduced color during the last five years. Advertiser demands caused many newspapers to take a by-the-numbers approach to color quality, treating it more like a science and less like a craft.
• Vendor Community Turns Over: The past five years saw both consolidation among traditional suppliers and the emergence of new ones, many from overseas.
• Cameras Go Digital: Spurred by improved quality and falling prices, digital cameras made major inroads into classified-ad departments and newsrooms.
• Newspapers Begin Adopting CTP: Many companies took a hard look at computer-to-plate technology over the past five years. Plate throughput, quality and cost improvements have recently made the technology viable for many.
• Toward a 50-Inch Web: Paper prices spiked in 1995, and newspapers scrambled to conserve newsprint. One popular move was web-width reduction. Many newspapers have gone to 50 inches, and many more have plans to do so.
Can you believe that there are still five technology stories more important than these? Drum roll, please!
No. 5: Advertising Goes Digital
Way back in 1995, most ads entered the newspaper as hard copy or film. The few ads that arrived via disk, cartridge or modem invariably caused problems—files couldn’t be opened, images couldn’t be seen, fonts were missing in action. A dozen or so companies competed to solve the problem, and AP’s AdSend, which standardized on Adobe’s Portable Document Format, went on to dominate the field. Now competition is revving up again, as other companies clamor to provide the same service via the Internet.
No. 4: Pagination (Finally) Arrives
The old joke was that pagination was always five years away. That joke was still being told in 1995, but it finally came true. Here in 2000, most newspapers are partially paginated, and some are fully paginated. That problem seemingly solved, many systems vendors are moving into the realm of digital-asset management, in which a common database feeds multimedia content to newsprint, the World Wide Web and other media.
No. 3: Presses Go Shaftless
In 1996, Swiss press manufacturer WIFAG introduced its shaftless presses to the North American market, proving that a newspaper press could run as efficiently as a Swiss watch. By removing shafts and synchronizing printing couples via electronic pulses, WIFAG brought a number of advantages: better registration, lower startup waste and “flying” plate changes. Virtually all other major press manufacturers have since introduced shaftless technology, and now the majority of new-press purchasers insist on it.
No. 2: Newspapers Struggle to Hire and Retain Technical Talent
The rapid pace of change has caused a worldwide shortage of technical talent across all industries. A number of factors, however, have made this problem especially acute for newspapers. Pre-press computer systems have moved from proprietary to open architectures, thereby slashing prices and allowing newspapers to choose “best of breed” components (see p. 35). Newspapers, however, still need technical people to evaluate what works best, and then install and maintain the solutions. Many press operators are reaching retirement age, and not enough younger operators are taking their place. Finally, many top journalists are jumping to the new “dot-com” companies. One root cause of all of these problems: newspapers’ unwillingness to pay top dollar for tech-savvy workers.
And now, another drum roll, please!
No. 1: The Internet and World Wide Web Change the Industry
This should come as a surprise to no one. The vast majority of U.S. newspapers now have Web sites, and publishers are lavishing more and more resources on them. Some of the larger ones are even structuring their Web operations as separate companies, or separate divisions that might become separate companies, to take advantage of all the money the financial markets can’t wait to pour into Internet businesses. Less obvious, but still profound, is the impact the Internet is having on traditional operations. Did you notice that four of my top five technological stories involve the Internet in some way? That made it tough to keep my No. 1 choice a secret (assuming you resisted the temptation to read ahead).
So there you have it—my top five technology stories of the last five years, which were also the first five years of our magazine’s existence. We’ve enjoyed reporting them and look forward to doing so for many years more.
Clark Robinson is the editor of TechNews. E-mail, robic@naa.org; phone, (703) 902-1686.