When was the first time you heard that paper was going to be passe as everything we read on traditional pulp and ink would someday be digitally delivered on screen?

For me, it was well before I ever heard of the Internet. Yet, here we are years later, and the predictions haven't come to pass. Instead, paper has proliferated -- we even print pages from our computer screens.

In recent weeks, however, announcements have come from a number of sources that could signify the long awaited shift from paper to screen is starting to happen.

One set of announcements concerns the shutting down of various print publications, some of which are turning to online alternatives that had been operating alongside the print editions. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer is becoming an Internet-only publication after 146 years. The Christian Science Monitor is abandoning its 101-year-old daily print publication in favor of a daily e-mail edition and weekly print edition.

We can place the blame on various factors, including the increased costs of collecting and reporting news, higher materials costs, the fast-paced move of advertising to the Internet and the difficult economic environment that all businesses are facing today. But we can't discount the fact that readers -- of newspapers, magazines and books alike -- now have better alternatives than ever to satisfy their information appetites. Google, Sony, Amazon and others are pushing very hard to get us to change our reading habits in a decidedly digital way.

If you think about the past decade, we've had alternatives -- including reading on our computer screens. But the alternatives all had their disadvantages. Reading from your desktop or laptop display, for instance, is difficult for long periods of time, and frankly, not very appealing.

But the experience is getting better, thanks to enhanced designs on the latest e-books, and the proliferation of reading choices for the devices.

Amazon's Kindle 2, an e-reader that weighs less than a pound and is about as thick as a magazine, lets you wirelessly download an entire book in less than one minute, and holds up to 1,500 books that you can choose from 245,000 available titles, including popular newspapers and magazines. Sony's Reader Digital Book provides similar ability to read millions of books, mostly those digitized by Google. Hearst Corp. is expected to introduce its own digital reader, perhaps even providing a wider selection of newspapers for download. Hearst, a publisher of its own magazines and newspapers, is the company that just downsized the Seattle newspaper.

While the trend in newspaper downsizing is alarming for the publishers, e-readers represent an opportunity to those who can take advantage of the trend, which is likely to happen slowly but consistently as devices continue to improve. Some newspapers have been able to obtain ad dollars as Google tries to find authors to sign over the right to publish their works. Many will work out deals to provide content for the e-readers.

Amazon has probably perfected the best tactics of all: Work all the angles. The company sells its own Kindle e-reader, sells downloadable books, magazines and newspapers for Kindle, sells printed editions of books, and as I found out from an Amazon ad that the company placed on Google, the company even sells Sony's competitive e-reader product.

Now, that's hedging your bets.