Imagine if all these years our main way of obtaining information had always involved getting it from a machine. A TV, a radio or a personal computer. People would have been trying to find ways to make the machines more mobile. In addition to our big-screen high definition TVs we all might also be wearing our own little Dick Tracy-style TVs on our wrists.  Common radio receivers would be the size of wireless Bluetooth headphones. The most common size personal computer would be a laptop or netbook. 

And then someone would invent the most practical portable item of them all — the newspaper, printed on paper that could be carried around and read literally anywhere. The beach, the backyard or in bed. No worries about power sources failing. Or Wi-Fi reception. You wouldn’t even necessarily have to worry about finding a shady spot so the sun wouldn’t obliterate the screen.

There would be no software tracking your every move and randomly picking its own opportunities when it might intrude on you to try to sell you something else.

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It’s genius. The paper it would be, printed on would be recycled so it could be used over and over again. It’s a renewable resource whenever we need to supplement the recycled supply. And while they’re growing, these trees would provide the added benefit of helping the environment by consuming carbon dioxide. Even the ink used to print the newspaper would be environmentally friendly, made of soy. 

And yet there it would be, a summary of all of the day’s news compiled on to several pages. We could read what we wanted when we wanted. We’d be free to skip over items that aren’t of interest. On the other hand if something was so important it warranted more space, it could be told right down to the smallest relevant detail. And we wouldn’t have to move a cursor, press a delete button or even touch a mouse to do any of it.

How much more convenient could it get? 

Not much. But I think the best example of just how differently we might be looking at newspapers today is one I heard in September 2007 at a conference I attended on new media. The speaker was John Leach, who is now managing partner in a company named Digital Strategies and on the associate faculty of Arizona State University’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication.

Even though he works in new technology, Leach said he still subscribes to the daily newspaper.

At the conference he told a story about his niece who was visiting him one day. As I recall he said she was not quite a teenager and had been used to getting her information from the Internet. 

Leach said when he returned from going out to the driveway to pick up the morning newspaper, his niece asked him what he had in his hand.

“It’s the newspaper,” Leach said. Seeing that it wasn’t making much of an impression, he explained, “You know that news that’s online, this is where they get most of it.”

Incredulously she said, “Do you mean they print out the whole thing for you?”

What’s new and innovative is all in the eyes of the beholder.

 E-mail comments for publication to editor@azbiz.com. Contact David Hatfield at dhatfield@azbiz.com or (520) 295-4237.