When the tools of the trade take over

NET RESULTS:I LOVE the onward roll of technological innovation - the new machinery, gadgets, applications, capabilities, possibilities. But that progress often also means loss - of crafts, skills, traditions, whole other worlds of activity, writes KARLIN LILLINGTON

I can most readily see change in the area in which I have worked for many years: printing and newspapers. Just about everything these days, from writing a story or taking a picture, to laying out pages and the printing process, is heavily digitised and computerised.

This has made many tasks much easier and far more efficient, but I also feel saddened by the loss of the honed skills and specialities that once were a key part of such industries.

For example, at the printers I worked for ages ago, if a client wanted a poster or brochure to run in two or more colours, that meant calling upon the abilities of a steady-handed layout artist with a razor-sharp Exacto knife, able to design and cut (over hours, perhaps days) the multiple overlays that had to align exactly to produce the required end result.

These days, such tasks can be done automatically and very quickly with a computer. So can, say, designing a round badge for an election campaign, in which the candidate's name curves around the badge.

It sounds simple, but I once had to create such a thing before printers had computers for the job. It was a tedious task that took the best part of a day. It required a compass and carefully cut deep notches between every letter so that a thin strip of paper with the candidate's name could be waxed on one side, then gently splayed at the notches to hug the curve drawn with the compass.

The wax held the paper in place so that the whole thing could go to the camera and a "plate" could be created for the printing press.

These days, placing letters around a curve is simply a matter of a few mouse clicks.

Newspapers, of course, have been totally redefined by technology, both in practice and increasingly in concept.

The arrival of computers in newsrooms, starting in the late 1970s and early 1980s, introduced one immediate change: quiet. That might seem a plus, but a newsroom without the clatter and ping of typewriters will always seem a diminished thing for many of us who started work in such noisy, bustling spaces.

The background noise of a newsroom used to confer an odd type of privacy, too. A reporter could make a phone call without having the conversation stand out, but the comparative silence of computers these days makes it easy to eavesdrop or, perhaps more accurately, makes it hard to block out neighbouring phone conversations.

But those are the cosmetic aspects of computerisation. On the practical side, computers and the internet have utterly altered how the typical journalist works.

It used to be that a story was typed on to paper - or, in some cases, phoned in to someone who typed the story as you read it to them. It was then sent to subeditors, who added handwritten corrections and changes. From there, this so-called "hard copy" of the story went off to typesetters, initially set in metal, then, in later years, photo-typeset on special paper that would be pasted down by layout artists onto layout "boards" (actually just a heavier card base). The printing plates were created from the boards.

Now, a story is typed by the journalist into a computer and sent digitally through a process of editing and layout before going to the printing presses. Most newspapers no longer even have departments - much less a single person - to take a phoned-in story.

Stories can be sent swiftly by e-mail, as can pictures from a photographer's digital camera (gone are the piles of empty film canisters in newspaper photography departments, and images are edited digitally, so photographers can see their results immediately rather than waiting to get back to the darkroom).

Computers and their inbuilt fast typing and editing capabilities were so handy for journalists that, even when they were bulky and primitive by today's standards, many reporters chose to lug them around, a favourite being Radio Shack's formidably resilient TRS-80 laptop line in the 1980s (affectionately known as the Trash-80, memorialised at www.trs-80.com).

The real game changer has been the internet. Stories can be researched, sent and posted via the internet. But the internet itself has already changed, and continues to change, what newspapers and other media are all about.

A gradual shift from computers and the internet being seen primarily as tools of the newsroom to being rivals of the newsroom happened over about a decade, with a stunning avalanche of activity in the past two years. Who ever expected the tools to become the master? The full repercussions and implications of that startling about-face have yet to be worked out by both the creators and consumers of media.

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