Charming and Scary 1981 Video Accurately Predicts Web's Destruction of Newspapers

Jim Romenesko picked up a priceless piece of video this week (see below) showing a 1981 news report from KRON Channel 4 in San Francisco on “turning on your home computer to read the day’s newspaper.”

Anyone who has worked in the media, or cares about its economic future, will watch this clip and weep — first with laughter, and then with grief.

Every word of the report seems to have accurately indicated the main issues facing newspapers 28 years ahead of time. The report is the Nostradamus of News. Here’s a line-by-line breakdown:

Imagine, if you will, sitting down to your morning coffee, turning on your home computer to read the day’s newspaper.

A wacky sci-fi idea in ‘81 — normal behavior today.

Both local San Francisco newspapers are investing a lot of money to try and get a service just like that started.

A lot of money was indeed invested. And now we have only one local San Francisco newspaper (to speak of) to show for it.

Science editor Steve Newman reports on one person already using the brand new system.

How sweet is it that this futuristic report is brought to us by Mr. “New Man”? And that he’s the science editor? Plus, one person using the web was news! And note Richard Halloway’s rotary phone. Those were the days.

Meanwhile across town in this less-than-fashionable cubbyhole of the San Francisco Examiner.

It’s still that way today under Anschutz management.

The Examiner’s David Cole: “This is an experiment. We’re trying to figure out what it’s going to mean to us as editors and reporters, and the home user. And we’re not in it to make money. We’re probably not going to lose a lot but we’re not going to make much either.”

Um, yes. Two of those three statements about money came true — the ones about not making money. Here’s Cole’s resume. The report seems to have predicted the rest of his career — he’s now a publishing technology consultant.

Of the estimated 2 - 3,000 home computer owners in the Bay area, the Chronicle reports over 500 have responded by sending back coupons.

Wow. One in six users responded — via regular mail! — to get news on the web? That’s an incredible demand response. Which means the newspapers involved (the NYT, Columbus Dispatch, Virginian Pilot, Washington Post, the Chron, the Examiner, the LAT and the Minn. Star-Trib) had a 20-year warning of the apocalypse, and still failed to monetize it properly.

Halloran, the user, talks about his new ability to copy and save parts of the newspaper that he’s interested in: “Which, I think, is the future of the type of interrogation the individual will give to the newspapers.”

Wow. If blogs and the web haven’t been an “interrogation” of newspapers, then what has?

Engineers now predict the day will come when we get all our newspapers by home computer.

Right again.

Shot of a paper seller: “For the moment at least, this fellow isn’t worried about being out of a job.”

Jobs turned out to be the key issue for everyone in newspapers.

It takes over 2 hours to receive the entire text of the newspaper over the phone, and with an hourly use charge of $5 the ‘telepaper’ won’t be much competition for the 20 cent street edition.

The kicker is the only part that gets it wrong. But as the years fell away, and those prices came down, it makes you wonder what “telepaper” publishers were doing when they first ignored the internet and then gave away their content for free.