Another example of competition for the airlines from electronic
data transmission is in the field of newspaper publishing. Until
recently, many airlines had profitable markets in the transport of
newspapers. Newspapers were a classic air freight commodity in the
sense that an out-of-date paper had no value and therefore speed was of
the essence in getting them to their market quickly. The problem for
airlines now is that newspaper publishers have realised that there are
two ways of ensuring that this happens. They can, at great cost, ship
printed newspapers. The alternative is to transmit the data contained in
the newspaper very cheaply to satellite printing stations. The papers can
then be printed near to where they will be sold and distributed by truck,
at a far lower total cost.