All On Paper Shows How To Build A Newsroom Time Machine

As someone who spent the first part of my adult career in print publishing, the Florida Atlantic University journalism class experiment, All on Paper, really made me smile. During my lifetime, the gap between analog print publishing and digital closed in and there was no turning back, until now. Newspaper veteran and volunteer advisor, Michael Koretzky, recently guided a group of college students through the production of their first newspaper without the use of digital equipment. That meant they had to figure out manual typewriters, film cameras and processing (in a makeshift mens’ room darkroom, no less), and even paste-up the entire paper by hand. All copy-editing was done with pencils and they used pica poles and proportion wheels to lay it all out. Cutting and pasting took on a very literal meaning.

Ah, the good ol’ days.

The Society of Professional Journalists sponsored the exercise in living history and overall it was a rousing success. The students had a lot of fun and really gained an appreciation for our current state of technology and how quickly it can all change.

Videographer Tatiana Cohen produced a short video about the newsroom time machine.