Saturday, March 21, 2009 | by nathan

Computer Owner

As someone with a journalism degree, who loosely ascribes that phrase to some aspects of his career, I find the current changes in the journalism industry at once fascinating, thrilling and a little alarming. The idea of major newspapers vanishing entirely confounds and depresses me, while the prevailing wisdom that an internet connection and a bit of time automatically makes a person a "journalist" makes me worry greatly. Still and all, I think the possibility of greater access to real journalism via the internet and mobile devices is a promising one. All that is to say, I was deeply interested in this local news piece from 1981, which is remarkably prescient. It took two hours to download the entire contents of a day’s newspaper, about four to six times longer than the average person spends reading it: