Fascinating future scenarios were outlined at the media 2010 event last month, just around the corner from sponsor Fairfax Media’s Sydney bolthole (and Star City casino). One I especially liked was the evolution of Chicago’s Everyblock – outlined by founder Adrian Holovaty – to a software-driven information hub.
No ongoing costs... just the ‘one-offs’ of development.
And self-styled geek Nic Fulton of Thomson Reuters, who foresees remotes as one of the great growth areas of the mid-term future. Apart from the awesome (awful?) prospect of couch-potatoes everywhere directing their own personal news-gathering robots, there has already been news of more immediate and practical developments. In the newspaper sector, they’re busy (as we reported last issue) completing the missing link between plateroom and press.
My copy of the ‘Australian’ carries news that miner Rio Tinto is already harnessing remote technology to man drilling rigs, load cargo and place explosives.
Benefits all round, including for the guy who gets to supply the automated Caterpillar trucks they’ll be needing – via the proposed extension of the Seven Group – and was once derisively referred to as “little Kerry”.
And to the other end of the technology spectrum: Who’d have thought there were still newspapers being printed hot-metal?
We thought the last, on our home patch at least, had gone years back, but the ‘Sydney Morning Herald’ came up with one with the news that the 100-year-old ‘Don Dorrigo Gazette’ in Dorrigo, NSW, still uses linecasters and loose type.
Pictures of the dying craft – in black-and-white, of course – featured John English with one of the few Heidelberg cylinders not sidelined to cutting and creasing. His son Michael, a former sawmill worker, took over the newspaper four years ago and now has about 1000 readers, including postal subscribers.
We tips our lid to them... keep it up guys, and we look forward to calling in next time we’re passing.
That credit goes to Mark Gibson and the San Francisco Conference and Visitors Bureau.
We liked the symbolism of the stragglers getting off, while the majority hanging on for the ride of their lives. Just like publishing a newspaper at the moment.
And I’m sure the beautiful city of San Francisco – where a new era has begun with ‘Chronicle’ issues rolling off the new Transcontinental print plant – will be a draw for all those eager to learn more.
It was good to visit APN’s new Centro editorial production unit on Queensland’s Sunshine Coast. Particularly encouraging is the opportunity for excellence being pursued as one of the aims of the centralisation project. Especially good is that proofreading – apparently abandoned at some sites – has been increased with the new process.
I was made most welcome by group executive editor Peter Owen, who I guess I was a little hesitant approaching, having once described the output of his Sunshine Coast Newspapers as “bland” – something he said then he’d never been called before. We recalled and smiled at the comments, and he generously admitted they might have been true at the time.
The brief time I spent on his patch last month suggested that it is not so now, and some of the credit may go to the Centro operation.
And at nearby Yandina, the hybrid print site is bustling. Part of the secret to keeping it running is three 1100 kva generators which can feed power back into the grid.
A day earlier, I’d learned why they need it: Driving past on the Bruce highway, I was in an electrical storm, enough to briefly bring all the warning lights up on my vehicle dash, but not immobilise it.
General manager Greg Carson tells me it’s policy to start the generators in advance of the storms – which are alarmingly frequent – to avoid production being interrupted.
They’re next door to the Buderim Ginger visitor centre, where a tourist train was ‘pooping’ all over the place (so to speak) when I called. No doubt APN’s effort helps keep it on track.