Last weekend, I caught a rerun of His Girl Friday on TV. For anyone that hasn’t seen this classic movie, Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell play two fast talking, wise cracking newspaper reporters whose love-hate relationship plays out against the background story of a murder case. The power of newspaper front pages is largely played for laughs, although the influence of the printed headline in the film’s life or death situation is unequivocal.

Obviously this state of affairs doesn’t exist today. Outside of tabloid scandals, newspapers now rarely break the news. Those that are still worth reading have turned their attention to analysis and comment, with the printed medium just one element of the news media company portfolio. This was brilliantly expressed in the Guardian’s recent Three Little Pigs film about open journalism.

Despite this shift in the role printed media plays in the modern news landscape, its importance as a method of communication, diversion, education, therapy and talent development is still beyond doubt - at least that’s the argument put forward by Ink-Global in this short video poem, The Journey, about the future of print.

One could argue then, that the future of print is a moot point, and if I was being cynical I would probably accuse The Journey of resting its entire argument on the fact that print will survive as people have to switch off their electronic devices during take-off and landing on an aeroplane. This is perhaps natural due to Ink-Global’s role as a provider of in-flight media.

The Journey, written & directed by David Bowden @ The Garden Studios

Putting my well-honed cynicism to one side however, The Journey is actually quite a rousing paean to the virtues of the printed word in its purest form, when ink hits paper and not just text on back lit touch-screens.