I loved the smell of molten lead, ink and solvents in the morning.

I was the makeup editor at The Province newspaper in Vancouver, early 70s. My morning expired in the back shop at 2 a.m., deadline time.

It was always a frantic deadline effort to do essentially what the Guttenberg press started doing in 1439.

Then, the dissemination of information started to change by quantum leaps. Boy, did it ever.

Things may leap again with two of the world’s biggest newspapers charging for online content. More on that in a minute.

Castanet is celebrating its 10th anniversary this year. It pioneered online news in the Okanagan. The site had the benefit of timeliness of words and visuals compared with the local papers and, to a lesser, but still considerable extent, over radio and TV.

My first experience with online media was writing a column for the defunct Kelowna.com.

I told friends that it took me less than a year to put them out of business.

Castanet took flight like a space shuttle with the 2003 fire. Kelowna.com spiked with the Westside fire but came back to earth shortly after, and stayed there.

There were several reasons for its demise. One glitch was slightly amusing, at least to the competition.

Kelowna.com had started a promotion to position itself as the viewers’ homepage. Click on the icon and win prizes.

This went on for several days before someone, wondering why there were no new homepagers, figured out the icon wasn’t working.

Castanet continues to grow.

Today, it is just over the 300th most visited site in Canada.

Each week, Castanet gets almost 200,000 unique visits.

Castanet general manager Chris Kearney said he expects the online news world to change faster than ever and the site will focus on broader content, further reach and delivery to mobile devices.

Meanwhile, The Daily Courier seems to be going in the opposite direction. As Kelowna grows, the Courier paper subscriptions shrink. The Courier’s online site ranks at the 7,400th most visited in Canada. There may be a weaving site that is more popular.

The Courier site is sparse in content unless viewers also subscribe to the paper. Ex-convict David Radler is part owner of the Courier. You may remember him as the guy who sold out long-time partner Conrad Black in a plea deal for himself.

Rather than providing more online information, Radler ordered that it be cut back in hopes he can increase print subscriptions and advertising revenue.

I’ve worked in newspapers, including the Courier, for a good part of my career. I still bleed ink and it’s a sad day for me when a newspaper fails, and that definitely would include the Courier.

The paper just doesn’t seem to know what it is or might be. It needs to develop a new revenue model and that probably won’t happen as long as the dinosaur-likes of Radler are hanging around.

The Capital News chugs along as a free paper. I have no idea what the profit picture is for the Cap News, or Cap Snooze, as Courier reporters like to call it. They do charge a lot for classified ads, whereas Castanet’s are free.

Newspapers’ advantage is that they are a more effective advertising format than online. Given the cost of printing and distribution, that may not be enough to save many of them.

The Times of London started charging for access to its website last summer. The site has attracted 105,000 paying customers.

The initiative is being closely watched because The Times and Sunday Times are among the first prominent general-interest newspapers to start charging for online content. The New York Times will follow.

Castanet once asked its viewers if they would be prepared to pay for service. Viewers refused to beat down the door. But that’s different than telling viewers they are going to pay if they want to keep the content. Kearney says there are no plans for Castanet to require paid subscriptions.

Free or not free?

Who knows how it’s going to shake out. Watching it unfold will be in the news.