How did we ever cope without the internet?
It's so much part of our lives it's easy to believe it has been around forever.
But it has only been in the past two decades that newspapers, including the Otago Daily Times, have become fully computerised.
The newsroom there was set up for the new technology in 1993 and, while it was being renovated, editorial staff were tutored in the use of computers in the rooms which now house Dunedin television station Channel 9.
It has dramatically changed the way journalists and newspapers operate.
The first duty for many each day is to wade through a pile of emails, deleting some, replying to others.
Typewriters are now obsolete and so, largely, are fax machines.
There could even be an argument that, if you exclude texting, the internet has overtaken the telephone as a communications instrument.
It's so quick and easy, albeit impersonal.
When I started in journalism, we communicated either by phone or person to person.
Then along came the fax - a marvellous invention, we thought at the time - and news releases used to clog the machine on a daily basis.
Now, sports organisations bombard newspapers and other news outlets with emails with the bare bones of news they want published.
Something which used to take me a day or more to research is now available at the click of a mouse.
Sports writers used to laboriously compile statistics in exercise books for rugby, cricket and other sports.
Now it's a quick search on the net.
For example, if I was previewing a rugby match between Southland and Otago and I wanted the Southland team, I used to phone the Southland team manager, coach or secretary.
Now, such basic information is available on the internet.
I wonder what the pioneers of New Zealand sports journalism, men like the late Sir Terry McLean and Dick Brittenden, would have made of modern communications.
I'm sure they would have welcomed the reduction in time spent on comparatively menial tasks but I'm not so sure they would have relished the proliferation of agents, managers and liaison officers who have become such a part of modern sport.
I used to have an Olivetti portable I lugged around sports venues, but it's more of a museum piece than a useful tool these days.
Clean copy used to be a matter of pride.
Many of us would change the intro to a story 10 or more times rather than present messy copy to the sub-editors.
There is a new breed of sports journalist whose opinions have been formed, to a large extent, by reading the internet and watching pay television.
Two decades and more ago, sports journalists formed their opinions by reading books, talking to people and watching live sport.
Carisbrook back then was the headquarters for Otago rugby and cricket and there would be a steady stream of people - administrators, coaches and players - calling in.
I would make a habit of checking in each day, for the informal chats generated many stories.
When I first covered rugby, for the Evening Star back in 1967, a runner on a motorcycle used to collect my typed copy from Carisbrook at half-time and at the end of the game.
There was a phone in the press box, with a direct line to the Star which I then used to dictate the introduction to the match report.
When I covered my first All Black tour, for the Evening Post in 1974, I used to dictate my stories into a tape recorder installed in its Wellington office.
It was reasonably quick and efficient but not all copy-takers had an intimate knowledge of rugby.
There was the memorable occasion when a Wellington writer, dictating to his office, praised the work of Colin Meads for his clean takes in the line-outs.
Readers that night were startled to learn that Meads had made cream cakes in the line-outs.
But, mostly, our copy was telexed through post offices and the closer the post office to the ground or hotel, the easier life was for journalists.
Another factor before the demise of evening newspapers was that the Otago Daily Times had to file at least twice to the New Zealand Press Association before 1pm.
When covering cricket at Molyneux Park in Alexandra, that meant walking from the scorer's box under the scoreboard to the pavilion, making a collect call from a public pay phone to NZPA and dictating the latest scores and a few paragraphs about the play.
And, by the time I had returned to the scorer's box, it was almost time to make the next call.
The first tour on which I filed by laptop was in South Africa in 1992 when laptops were not so sophisticated and neither was the phone system.
We all had dreadful problems - some of my stories arrived at the newsroom as a mixture of indecipherable gobbledygook - and at times we had to resort to the phone or fax.
But, after representations to the hotel manager, and the help of two South African Telecom technicians, we were allocated a direct line out of the hotel and most of our problems were solved.
But no system is foolproof, as I was graphically reminded when France played England in the semifinal of the World Cup on a Sunday night in Sydney in 2003.
I was sitting in the front row of the press area, which was open to the elements, and what began as light drizzle turned into a steady downpour as the match went on.
Midway through the second spell my laptop, despite my best efforts to shield it from the rain, simply seized up and my notes, which I had also tried to protect, became almost indistinguishable.
I ended up using my mobile to dictate my report to the office and, after cutting out three times - mobiles tend to do so in concrete stadiums with large crowds - I muddled through.
Back at the hotel, tired, wet and a bit dispirited, I wondered how I could repair the laptop when my eyes lit on a hair dryer in the bathroom.
I put it on low and gave the laptop a thorough drying.
Twenty minutes later, I switched it back on and, voila, it worked.
Times have changed, all right, and it is a luxury to be able to sit in a hotel room anywhere in the world and send copy, rather than the laborious task of trudging back and forth to post offices.
It's quicker, cleaner and, usually, easier.
But I wonder if there is quite the camaraderie of years past when journalists used much more basic methods of communication.
