Same goes for Cyber, which was introduced at Queensland Newspapers in 1996 and quickly moved to the Windows version CyperPage. This operated well in Queensland (rolling out to Townsville in 2000-2001) but bosses held back from Windows roll-outs in the bigger southern states markets.

Like so many things which are happening now, there is evidence of long-term planning having been in place since those early days. In fact, look very closely and the changes all took place either side of the adoption in the US of the Telecommunications Act, 1996 which set the stage of the WWW boom: by April 1995, Netscape had sold 250,000 of its shares to some of the largest and most influential newspaper publishers in the United States, and formed strategic alliances with Adobe (to develop digital publishing systems) and Macromedia (now one and the same company).

Although some journalists and commentators like to label this as a conspiracy, it’s not: it’s simply long-term corporate planning. Something which the same population of journalists have let slip under their professional radar. And failed to implement in our own profession. Let’s not make that mistake twice.