It started as an idea... a new style of trade publications in a marketplace of me-too magazines, and morphed into a global platform for what is still publishing's most exciting tech form: newsmedia.

A piece about shaftless presses discussed how the technology was enabling hyperlocal editions; another the potential of digital printing for newspapers... and elsewhere there was more than a nod to the threat posed by online publishers.

GX is 20 this year, having begun in August 1998 as a section of Australian graphic arts magazine GX Report, and growing to reach a global newsmedia technical and management audience.

At the PANPA conference in Brisbane that year, then president Barry Johnson spoke of increased weekend circulations, but also of opportunities from "burgeoning online services", which Fairfax chief executive Bob Muscat assured delegates would not kill newspapers.

Optus chief Chris Anderson wasn't so sure: "You have the whip-hand in news today, but will you keep it," he asked. And the commitment to print of Cameron O'Reilly's APN News & Media was put into question by the "cult following" he said came from putting vision from its Mulray drive-time show online.

Talking shaftless presses, our cover story told how the 200,000-circulation Midi Libre had increased editions from 12 to 17, dramatically saving waste and without stopping its Wifag press. We had a story about the Centralian Advocate, printed Alice Springs on a Goss Community which had been trucked in from Darwin; these days the press has gone and it's the papers which are trucked in.

Celebrate GXpress Magazine's 20^th birthday all this year with insights and flashbacks.