The New York Times recently ran an amusing video about reading a newspaper online. It showed the first attempt — in 1981 — by the San Francisco Examiner to distribute its content electronically.

Viewed with 28 years of hindsight, it’s hard to believe that the internet was once this primitive. It took two hours — and $10 — to download the paper, which has no pictures or advertisements. See it at http://preview.tinyurl. com/bpo75s. Nowadays, of course, there are millions of people around the world who obtain their news online and seldom pick up a newspaper or listen to a radio bulletin.

The internet has drastically changed the way the communications industry works — and is continuing to change it.

Take the PR business. Once upon a time, public relations professionals wrote a news release, printed it on headed notepaper and posted or hand delivered it to media outlets.

If there was a photograph to go with it, an individual print was needed for each and every newsdesk.

Then along came the digital way of doing things. Now, 99.9% of news releases are emailed, and accompanying JPEGs provide the pictures.

It’s safe to say that the communications industry could not operate as it does today without the electronic tools at its disposal.

Media correspondents around the globe file their stories and pictures by email. Newspapers are produced and edited in one city and printed in another.

For example, many London-based papers have their Irish editions printed in Belfast and Newry by Belfast Telegraph owners Independent News and Media (www.inmplc.com ).

“Citizen journalists” capture footage at the scene of a story on their mobile phones and sell it to television companies. There are even web sites to help you do it.

One of the leading services in this area, www.scoopt.com , has been acquired by the photographic giant Getty Images.

While we’re on the subject of photography, a number of sites have established a business selling pictures to media outlets, publishers and anyone else who needs a stock image.

One, www.alamy.com , boasts a stock of around 15 million photographs. Again, the idea of buying a picture instantly from any computer terminal in the world simply could not have existed in the days before the web.

And there’s more. A month ago, USA Today (www.usatoday.com ) became the latest newspaper to make itself available on Amazon’s Kindle device (www.amazon. com/kindle ).

Kindle has also transformed the world of publishing — 230,000 books are already available on the wireless reader.

Even the way writers submit their work to publishers has changed drastically. Manuscripts of short pieces of fiction, for example, can be uploaded in seconds to literary magazines like Narrative (http://narrativemagazine.com ).

The publisher HarperCollins uses the web for talent spotting, inviting writers to have their work assessed by their peers at www.|authonomy.com.

Marketing, too, has been transformed by the internet. To see why, just take a look at www.clickz.com .

It explores everything from search engine optimisation to behavioural targeting. But, as I’ve mentioned in this column before, the most remarkable example of marketing in recent times was Barack Obama’s use of a massive email campaign to win support for his Presidential campaign.

Interestingly, the internet has allowed newspapers to go back in time, too. The Dallas Morning News (www.dallasnews.com/|communities ) is the latest of several American papers to introduce “neighbourhood” pages on its web site, featuring local news — territory that once belonged to weekly papers.

New developments are happening all the time, of course. The US-based Lucky magazine (www.luckymag.com ) has launched an iPhone application that allows shoppers to choose an item — let’s say a pair of shoes — and then press a button marked “find it near you”.

You’ll then receive a text message to say that — for example — the second floor shoe department in Nordstrom’s has set a pair aside for you.

It’s fair to say, though, that the media industries have only begun to explore the creative possibilities offered by the online world.

Darren Lemon is general manager of eircom NI (www.eircomni.co.uk ). His email address is Darren.lemon@eircomni.co.uk.