Buoyed by a fresh confidence in the future of print as their dotcom rivals struggle to keep going, newspaper publishers are considering how digital technologies can address some of the inherent weaknesses of the traditional medium.

Electronic publishing has some undeniable strengths - including global reach, instantaneous distribution and low production costs. But new media have significant drawbacks. You are likely either to be deskbound, or reliant on a mobile device that is expensive, limited in functionality and slightly inconvenient to carry around.

Print, meanwhile, has some compelling strengths. Printed newspapers are light, convenient, disposable, and you can afford to lose them. Pages of headlines can easily be scanned, and reading speed and retention rates are very high. As a result, you are more likely to be reading this on pink paper than on an electronic screen.

Nevertheless, technologies such as digital print, computer-to-press (CTP) and even "digital paper" could give newspapers some of the advantages enjoyed by new media.

Digital presses are relatively low-cost devices in comparison with conventional newspaper presses. They are also far simpler to operate and take up less physical space, so they can be accommodated in modest print outlets.

This would enable newspapers greatly to increase their reach by producing in short print runs or on demand much closer to the point of sale. You may one day soon expect to get your home town newspaper while travelling anywhere on business, albeit perhaps in a reduced or different format.

There is no wastage or preparation overheads, so even individual newspapers printed on demand in self-service kiosks would be feasible. Amsterdam-based PEPC, for example, has pilot kiosks running in hotel lobbies producing A3 format facsimiles of newspapers on standard photocopy-grade paper.

Also, each copy can be different, opening the way to targeted advertising, and personalised news. Vancouver-based NewspaperDirect is producing similar A3 newspapers by arrangement with hotel managements in key hotel chains in major cities. Its technology integrates with the hotel booking system and prints the name and room number of each guest, making distribution easier and taking advantage of the ability of digital presses to insert variable information.

Physical page size and grade of paper is a key limitation of digital presses at present. The look and feel of a printed newspaper with large format, folded pages printed on lightweight newsprint appears hard to achieve.

Arved Hubler of the Institut fur Print in Chemnitz, Germany points out that the relatively modest size of the market means that new machines to overcome these limitations will be slow in coming.

Other limitations, says Prof Hubler, include low speed and production capacity, and the high cost of each copy especially if colour is required. These are the reasons for the experimental nature of newspaper production on digital presses at present.

Another participant in this emerging market is the Xerox Newspaper Network. This has recently been printing the London-based Independent newspaper in A3 format in New York, providing readers with the newspaper on the day of publication for the first time, albeit in a reduced format.

Lois Niland, who runs the network, warns that "publishers need to be open to significant organisational change - across editorial and advertising departments - to leverage the full potential benefits of digital print, such as personalisation and targeted advertising."

Despite the potential of digital printing, Presspoint, the pioneer of A3 format locally printed newspapers, was forced to cease trading during the Sydney Olympics.

Other companies such as Oce are planning to convert existing digital presses aimed at book publishers to produce more familiar newspapers of an intermediate size (currently 18in tall) on folded, lightweight paper. But there is a trade-off between the technical breakthroughs and the number of suitable presses available in the printing marketplace.

The key for success may be the availability of suitably equipped print outlets in the locations that newspapers want to reach, rather than technological breakthroughs per se.

As John Birkenshaw of the UK-based Print Industry Research Association (PIRA) puts it: "If you don't have machines at or near the point of sale, you still have a distribution problem - which is exactly what you are trying to avoid."

Digital presses look set to impact book publishing sooner than newspapers because the standard book format can be adequately produced using today's technology. If bookshops are equipped to print books on- site, adequate and minimal stocks on the shelves can be assured and "out-of-print" should become a thing of the past.

Computer-to-press (CTP) technology, meanwhile, addresses another problem for the conventional print medium, by enabling the images on the printing plates to be formed directly on the press cylinders, saving time and costs.

ManRoland, the German-based press manufacturer, announced last week a product that would help a newspaper to change the image on a limited series of pages part of the way through the press run without too much delay. This would allow modified editions for special interest niche groups, or sections of local news for different regions to be produced.

Digital paper is the most exotic of the new digital technologies being developed and applicable to newpapers. The goal is a thin, flexible paper-like material that can display a clear image like print, but can be updated and reused.

One approach, electronic ink, is being developed at MIT's Media Lab in Boston. It is commercialised by a company called E-Ink in which both IBM and Lucent have a stake.

A thin substrate containing charged ink capsules lies between two transparent plastic surfaces. Each point on the surface of the "paper" is addressable by thousands of transistors that attract or repel the charged ink as required to present the image.

Meanwhile, Xerox has developed an equivalent product called Gyricon at its Palo Alto Research Center (PARC). Instead of ink capsules, Gyricon relies on tiny disks which can be rotated to display either their light or dark side, or partially rotated to produce various shades of grey.

The current state-of-the-art of these technologies is suitable for shop signs with updateable prices or special offers - an application that was tested in New York stores by E-Ink in 1999. But they are far from ready for a legible book or newspaper.

One advantage is that, according to its backers, relatively little battery power will be required to form the image, and once established, it should stay there without any battery usage until the next update. This may not be required until breakfast time the following day.

On the other hand, digital paper may not be cheap and this could further delay its adoption. Prof Hubler says the heavy R&D requirements make high prices inevitable. "This will only be interesting if a customer buys the device for other purposes such as a combined e-book, palm, laptop and newspaper. I don't see a major impact on the newspaper business [any time soon]."

Mr Birkenshaw adds: "I don't know what the e-newspaper will be, but we haven't seen one yet. Digital paper may possibly be it."