As children, many of us made money as paperboys delivering newspapers on our bicycles to local homes and businesses. It was a set route, which was especially difficult on Sundays when the papers were filled with coupons and extra flyers. Reading the Sunday comics was a weekly highlight.
There were minimal other sources of information before the internet. The major channels had nightly news programs that we all watched but otherwise, the speed of news delivery and other sources of information was limited. There was no cable, no satellite TV, no Roku, no Netflix; over-the-air radio and TV were it.
Beginning in the late 18th century, healthcare publishing companies sold subscriptions and sent print journals to their subscribers. I remember my chairman’s office lined with years of the various ophthalmic journals. The dissemination of healthcare information was very slow. To do research for a paper would require going to the library and copying what you needed out of the original journals to write your paper. The internet changed everything. Not only can all research be performed online, but the bibliography can also be automatically populated while reading the journal articles online. Information travels instantly through social media and other platforms. But this instant access also leads to information overload, where curation can help.
The parent company of Retinal Physician magazine has changed several times since our inception, but the latest change is one that will propel the magazine to even greater heights. Embracing digital media and the changing habits of younger generations of healthcare providers, Conexiant was born to deliver information in a comprehensive, personalized way. Building on years of experience in the field, the new platform hopes to deliver information using machine learning to keep us up to date in the formats that fit our busy lives. Retinal Physician will remain the source we all look to for the latest specialty-specific clinical information and news, but the back end of Conexiant will deliver timely, curated content unobtrusively.
And what happened to all those paperboys and delivery routes? Papergirls soon joined, and the term “newspaper carrier” quickly replaced that name, but no one really knows when this practice stopped. Since the decline of daily newspapers was quick and brutal, they may have occurred around the same time. Digital editions came out, further reducing the days of the week that print editions were released. A friend of mine was publisher of the Cleveland Plain Dealer, and in his memoirs, he describes meeting presidents, dignitaries, sports figures, and celebrities. He boasted that he had one of the best jobs in the city. Now, the huge Plain Dealer buildings near the Cleveland Hopkins Airport are largely empty, living on only through the fictional depiction as the Cleveland Preserver in the Amazon Prime science-fiction series, Paper Girls. RP
