The future of the newspaper industry: the view from 1981…

Fascinating and depressing, here’s a 1981 look at a quirky new technology: reading your newspaper on your “home computer” via signals transmitted over phone lines.

The news report has Tomorrowland feel to it, fat monitors with tiny screens, clunky keyboards, a guy setting a phone handset into a modem. Most outdated of all: the observation at the end that online news is unlikely to pose much of a challenge to the dominance of the 20-cent printed paper.

Hat tip: Horse’s Ass.