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Web pages were growing by hundreds a day, but they were curiosities,
and most people didn’t know how to code their own anyway. In 1995,
PR practitioners wrote letters on paper and printed them on laser printers
along with the envelopes that got mashed through the printer rollers

unless there was an old IBM Selectric typewriter still around. In 1995,
networking was balky. There was scarcely a day and never a week when
the internal network didn’t go down for one reason or another. In 1995,

we kept paper calendars and we didn’t know how to use a personal
information manager system like Microsoft Outlook or Internetbased
systems.
Looking around my office, the difference between now and 1995 is

the dominance of the PC on my desk. Everything I do is in the terminal.
I manage e-mail, calendaring, research, meeting setups, client contacts,
reporter logging, time, you name it in the machine unless it is packed

into the telephone voice mail system. I write a paper letter about once in
every six months, and frankly, I’ve forgotten how to print it. (Let’s see,
letterhead face down and facing forward…). I store less paper than I

ever have. Our filing system now is the system-wide server (backed up
daily, of course). Our ability to find things rests on a search engine and
not a secretary’s elephantine memory. We have paper files, but they

have not been updated in months and they won’t be. Eventually, we’ll
store, then dump them.
This is not precisely the Internet revolution we expected. We
expected more businesses to be online. We expected older, established

companies to be on their knees while “new model” businesses rose to
change customer and influential contact, distribution, communications
and relationships. Little of that happened. There was change but it was

in processes, not business models.
Everything has become easier. We e-mail clients and reporters
now. We rarely use a fax machine unless a client or reporter insists on it
for some reason. We used to scramble for client information, including

traveling to the client to bring home box loads of documents Today, we
look on the client’s Web site first. We used to research competitors in
Lexis/Nexis and print out hundreds of stories that we laboriously edited

and summarized. Today, we go to competitors’ Web sites to see what
they say about themselves and why. We used to write long pitch letters
on paper to sell ideas to reporters. Today pitches are shorter and more

pointed for e-mail. It’s the headline and lead that count. We used to
work with designers and printers to write, illustrate and print brochures.