Impact of Desktop Publishing on Printing

Interesting article about how the increase in desktop publishing has affected the printing industry — especially prepress jobs:

Desktop Publishing's Legacy: 230,000 Fewer Commercial Printing Workers, and An Explosion in Content Creation Workers

As someone who started working in publishing at the tail end of the "camera ready" era and starting into the digital era, it is interesting to see some of these numbers. Ten years ago you had to go to prepress houses to prepare files for press, pay an incredible amount of money to have hi-resolutions scans done, ship bluelines overnight to meet deadlines, and pay large prep costs for plating jobs. Now, most of that can be done at a home office and loaded directly to the printer without leaving the seat of your chair.