Back in the late 1980s and early 1990s, digital photography equipment was rare [and expensive]. I’m not just talking about cameras, but also all the equipment needed to process those digital files into a format that could be used in daily newspaper production. Learning to use these digital photographic tools was the goals the National Press Photographers Association‘s Electronic Photo Workshop.
In November 1990, the EPW was in Tempe, AZ and I served as “Executive Editor.” The real work, however, done by the workshop co-chairs: John Cornell, Newsday, and Bill Hodge, Long Beach Press Telegram. There were more than 90 participants [see page two of the PDF] and more than two dozen vendors, including Adobe and Apple.
The published work from the conference was a 32-page tabloid that has photos and stories about life in Arizona. Each story used different combinations of equipment.
I liked what I wrote for the introduction to the publication:
This newspaper is living classroom experiment. Our purpose is not to highlight one program, camera, or other piece of hardware against its competition.
To the contrary, we wanted to bring together the technological marvels of our time with the trained eye of journalists using cameras. Only by exploring technology will we learn how best to use the computer software and hardware that have greatly influenced our newsrooms.
Readers need to !mow of the almost superhuman efforts undertaken by both vendors and participants to publish this newspaper, and the great sense of pride in attempting to capture images that communicate information.. Despite the lure of the hardware and software, the primary purpose of the pages produced here was to communicate.
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Content was our overall goal. Content married with technology.
There are some other articles that are worth a historical read.