By 1950, however, the fax newspaper had disappeared. The introduction of television at the end of World War II is blamed for defeating these early attempts at electronic newspapers, although I suspect that most people simply preferred their newspaper to be delivered at their door the old-fashioned way.

The newspaper industry continues to search for new ways to deliver newspapers to our homes and businesses using electronic transmission and replacements for paper. This search has thus far been fruitless.

In the early 1970s, the use of microfiche along with a small, hand-held, flat-screen viewer was explored for the delivery of a paperless newspaper. It never got off the ground. In the early 1980s, an electronic "videotex" newspaper that would be delivered over telephone lines and displayed on home TV sets was developed by Knight-Ridder and Times-Mirror in partnership with AT&T. Videotex also folded.

Today, interest has again returned to the electronic newspaper. Recycling of paper would be eliminated, and forests would be saved. Flat high-resolution screens, microprocessors, CD-ROM, multimedia, and the Internet are some of today's technologies that are relevant to the renewed enthusiasm for the electronic newspaper. Yet, the technology is costly, the displays are not very readable, and the batteries still need to be recharged. For packing vast amounts of high-resolution information into a readable and easily accessible medium, paper continues to be nearly impossible to beat.

One would think that there were some lessons for the newspaper industry from this history of failure of the electronic newspaper. Yet, newspapers continue to fear that someone--perhaps the Baby Bell local telephone companies--will stumble upon the secret of the thus-far elusive electronic newspaper. As a response to these thus-far unfounded fears, the newspaper industry has lobbied to keep the phone companies out of the information industry, and these lobbying efforts have been successful.. The new telecommunication legislation recently signed into law excludes the Baby Bells from electronic publishing for the coming four years.

Perhaps the newspapers are correct in their fears of the Baby Bells and electronic publishing, since the Internet would be a great way to access classified ads. But if the new technology is so great, why then hasn't some innovative newspaper already developed it and linked it intelligently to their newspaper? Dating services are currently offered by many newspapers with access by telephone as a means to answer the published ads. This type of service is an example of a partnership between newspapers and the telephone industry that is mutually beneficial. Why not extend this concept to all classified ads making them available over the Internet in addition to publishing them in the newspaper?

Even though there seems to be a place for access over the Internet to various forms of information, in my opinion, the cyberpaper will not replace the conventional newspaper. I, and probably most people, continue to have a fondness for the paper and print of the newspaper. It is already portable, recyclable, easily readable, instantly accessible, and contains all the information one would ever wish.

It seems that paper will be the medium well into the 21st century, and the quest for the electronic newspaper must join the paperless office and picturephone as yet another of today's technological Holy Grails.

A. MICHAEL NOLL is a professor at the University of Southern California's Annenberg School for Communication. This article is based on material from his new book Highway of Dreams to be published later this year by Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. © 1996 AMN

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