It’s a different era in newspapers now. I have written about it before, but when I started in the business — in not so distant 1999 — things were quite a bit different.

The paper now is all designed electronically, including the way we send pages to the pressroom.

When I was first starting out however, in a tiny town in Oregon, we were still printing out pages and pasting them up on large pieces of thick paper as if we were creating some sort of middle school science project. After the paste-up was finished, we would take them back to the pressmen to be plated.

Very few papers still use the paste-up process, something that’s now as long gone as Sony Walkmans and Beta tape players.

With the digital age, newspapers seem to be trying a lot of different things these days, still spending quality time on the print product, but also focusing on new media as well.

The Austin Daily Herald is no different.

For instance, we have a Facebook page, so I encourage everyone to become a fan. Answer trivia questions there and find out about breaking news as it happens.

Follow us on Twitter.

In addition, we publish an E-News edition, which enables us to send daily stories via e-mail each morning to anyone who signs up for the free service.

To sign up, simply e-mail enews@austindailyherald.com with ‘ENEWS’ in the subject line.

Many people are under the impression that newspapers are dying, and we disagree.

Newspapers have survived radio and television and are utilizing Internet tools to make their overall product better.

That’s certainly the case at the Austin Daily Herald.

While we still spend a lot of time and energy on our print edition, we also spend a great deal of effort on our other products as well.

So check out all we have to offer and remember that just because the Internet has been invented doesn’t mean that newspapers will suffer the same fate as Walkmans and Beta tape players.