Newspapers, in some form, have been around for nearly 2000 years. They have changed in every way imaginable over the past thousands of years. We went from daily notices of the day's events being read aloud to the people in a Greek polis (i.e., Athens) to printing millions of newspapers about every topic imaginable, which are sent everywhere around the world. In just over 500 years, we have gone from printing one page every three minutes (no use of color available at that time) to printing thousands of pages a minute with glorious detail and spectacular color. This ability never could have come to fruition using the printing press and all of its variations. Computers are necessary to allow newspapers to be designed quickly (in terms of layout), have added detail, and to be mass-produced on a daily basis.

The first newspapers were written by hand every day and read aloud in the public courtyard in ancient Greece. There were the daily notices of the day's events and what the people should know from the day before. Paper development was still at its early stages and was not perfected at this time. Many notices about decisions, decrees, and laws were written on whitened stone to be displayed around the polis. It is suggested that these publications are not newspapers as such because they did not appear on a regular basis, only as needed. I would disagree with this notion because any publication of news is a form of today's newspaper. There was definitely room for improvement in the way of printing and distributing the news.

In Europe, during the Middle Ages, important news was written in an historical fashion. News traveled nationally and internationally along a chain of information, where people would add new facts about military, political, and religious events. This information was hand written and each writer associated his name and location to the events written on the paper being passed.

The invention of the movable type printing press was so significant to the newspaper business, that it is comparable to the invention of the wheel. In the middle of the 15th century in Germany, Johannes Guttenberg is credited with inventing the first "movable type" printing press. The first paper factory came to Germany in 1411 and just 42 years later, Guttenberg created his printing press. The ability to produce sturdy paper in a paper mill probably induced the idea for a printing press.

Guttenberg's printing press could print out one page every three minutes, there were no colors or graphics used with this first machine. Most of what Guttenberg printed were religious material (catechisms and bibles). Guttenberg worked on improving his original printing press and sought funding for his efforts.

Newspapers as we know them did not come about until after the invention of the printing press. It would not be possible for a writer to print enough copies by hand to produce a daily newspaper that would reach many people. The printing press used to produce the first regular news publication (in the 17th century) was an improvement on Guttenberg's original design. While it was an improvement, the basic concept remained the same; the machine and letters were made of wood, paper had to be positioned by hand, it still required physical strength to make the impressions on the paper, and the ink took a long time to dry. There were some minor improvements to the design before the 19th century, such as the Stanhope cast-iron press, which had the same design as wooden presses, but its metal parts allowed easier movement. While these improvements often increased productivity slightly (the estimated rate of production in the 17th century is 150 sheets per hour), the need for many skilled workers remained. There was not really a replacement of people during this stage because the presses continued to require highly skilled workers to maintain the machine and its parts, which included carving font characters. As small improvements were made, usually the main result was an increase in productivity. At one point, businesses placing ads with the newspaper decided to carve their own design for the ad instead of newspaper employees doing this job. This did upset the people who were previously carving the ad imprints because their work was reduced and therefore their income was reduced.

The printing press did a lot for the general population during this stage of automation. Most people were illiterate and depended on others to read the Bible to them or report the news. As the published word began to spread, so did literacy. The printed word is given credit for its contribution to many revolutions of the way the general public thought. In the 16th century, the Protestant Reformation became the first revolutionary mass movement that took advantage of printed propaganda. John Calvin also published his ideas, which helped to further spread them to the general public.

In America during the 18th century, Benjamin Franklin advocated the printing press and its uses. He established 40 printing companies in the colonies and he published the "Pennsylvania Gazette". The newspapers in the colonies soon began to print literature containing anti-British propaganda, which aided in the success of the American Revolution. While the printing press was crucial to the people of the time, there were no major changes until the following century.

Once again, the drastic improvements in printing the newspaper came with improvements in the way paper was made. Early in the 19th century, the papermaking process improved, making paper cheaper. It began to be produced on long rolls of continuous paper, allowing machines to be built, which took advantage of this new way of producing paper.

Frederick K–nig supervised the building of a steam cylinder press in 1814. This printing press featured a rotating cylinder that pressed paper against a flat type platen. By 1920, this machine was producing 1,000 copies an hour. Applegath and Cowper created a new version of this steam-based cylinder printing press which could produced 5,000 copies an hour, quintupling the previous rate of just seven years earlier. With the new steam printing presses, the need for unskilled physical laborers decreased and most laborers that had previously been employed by the papers were fired. For decades after the first cylinder press was in use, new machines with more and more cylinders were created. Each addition of cylinders increased the speed and ability of the printing press. By the middle of the 19th century, paper handlers were losing their jobs because the machines were able to do their jobs.

The people in the middle of the 19th century had an effect on the automation process. More and more children were going to school and becoming literate. This increased and diversified the audience of newspaper readers. With this increase came the need for newspaper-creation to improve in terms of physical quality of the paper and speed of production.

The next steps in the automation progress came near the end of the 19th century, first with the invention of the Linotype machine. Ottmar Mergenthaler built on the idea of having a keyboard implementation of type setting. He created a machine, which would allow people to set type with a keyboard on matrices of letters. These matrices formed lines and then molten metal could be poured into the mould to set the type, these matrices could also be reused in a later printing effort. This new technology displaced many skilled workers who were employed as typesetters. In 1889, Hippolyte Marinoni created the second invention that improved the art of making newspapers. Marinoni improved the rotary press to allow a sheet of paper to turn its path and print on both sides of the paper in one trip through the machine. Machines by this time could also cut the long rolls of paper and fold the sheets without human assistance. This again displaced the unskilled laborers employed at the newspapers because this was another reduction in paper handling.

Today, computers allow authors to aid in their own typesetting. There is not as much need for proofreaders with spell checkers on our document editors. Newspapers are designed on computers; everything from the layouts to the pictures are formatted and planned on a computer screen. People are not needed to create wooden or metal letters to place in the press or to crank the handle. There are, however, many highly skilled workers required to design the pages and maintain the sophisticated computers and machinery now required to print quality newspapers. This means that in this stage of automation, the previous skilled craftsmen who would design layouts and perform typesetting duties are no longer needed. Many of these men continue to be employed by newspapers because of their general knowledge of newspapers, however newspaper production is no longer seen as an art or a craft as it had in the past. While some jobs have been eliminated, many other jobs continue to be needed in one capacity or another.

One aspect of newspaper design that has not been completely taken over by computers and still requires the artistic abilities of a person is the graphic design. Computers allow designers to be more creative with their images. Designs can be detailed and use every shade of color imaginable. With the advent of computers in the newspaper business, every aspect from speed to image design has improved and things that were never possible before are now accomplished with ease and accuracy.

The Internet has greatly improved newspapers and widened their impact. Many news sources are now online, for example ABCnews and The Washington Post. News reaches a far wider audience almost instantaneously - raw news reports from such sources as Reuters and AP can be streamed to a worldwide audience as fast as a reporter can type. More employees are needed to maintain servers, update featured news stories, and update style formats.

Many people predict the elimination of paper newspapers all together. Instead of eliminating paper altogether, we can now keep our paper newspapers and be able to have electronic versions as well. Each type serves a different purpose. We can now personalize what we want to see in our newspapers and view the information online. With improvements in personal computer printers, people can print news from online news sources at home if they choose. We can view our news reports via our personal palmtop with web capabilities from anywhere in the world.

We have come a long way to get from writing the daily news out by hand and announcing it in the town's square to going online and learning what is going on around the world in an instant. In every stage of change, the skilled craftsmen working for the newspapers resisted the coming of the new way of making newspapers. As the art of making newspapers moved through the three stages of automation, great improvements were made in the speed newspapers were created, the quality of the paper (physical and visual), and the way we can access the information. Now in the third stage of automation, newspapers are no longer seen as works of art and their creation is no longer viewed as a craft.

As newspaper-creation moved through the three stages of automation, we saw the invention of the first printing press in the first stage, replacing writing the news out by hand. We also saw improvements on the original design, which improved the quality of the newspapers and the speed of their production. The general public was greatly impacted by these first inventions because it improved literacy and increased their awareness about the world around them. During the second stage, there were an enormous amount of changes, and we went from the steam-driven machines printing papers with the use of cylinders to pass the paper to designing the entire paper on a computer screen and pushing a button to print the thousands of newspapers. In the early part of this stage, the people affected the process of automation. More and more children were going to school and becoming literate, creating a larger audience for newspapers to cater to. Once the audience increased, newspapers started employing people to improve the speed and quality of their current printing capabilities. In the final stage of automation, there have been so many new ways created, which allow us to access our news from anywhere. This third stage of automation was measured in decades rather than centuries as the previous two stages were measured. The old ways of newspaper-creation are often admired, but most people enjoy their daily paper the way it is now.