Students in the Florida Atlantic University J-school produced a newspaper using (mostly) pre-computer technologies, composing on manual typewriters, pasting up with X-Acto blades and rubber cement, shooting on film and developing in a darkroom:
While archeologists try to recreate what life was like 10,000 years ago, and historians try to recreate what life was like 1,000 years ago, journalists can’t even recreate how they published a newspaper 20 years ago. No one documented the details or saved the old equipment. (I had to buy some of it from creepy old men through Craigslist.)
Journalists may write history’s first draft, but when it comes to covering their own history, they don’t even take notes. I can imagine college students 20 years from now asking their aged adviser…
Your digital cameras didn’t just beam images to the cloud as you shot them? What’s a “memory card”? And you had different programs for writing, design, and photo editing? Does anyone still have “Word,” “InDesign,” and “Photoshop”? It’d be fun publishing an issue that way – maybe we can buy copies from some creepy old men on Craigslist.
HOW TO BUILD A NEWSROOM TIME MACHINE
(via Beyond the Beyond)