The march of the digital frontline seems to have relentlessly vaporised so much of what is around us and sent it to the cloud. With our heads now so often stuck in those clouds we seem to be losing touch of what is physically around us; including each other. What if we could add a digital soul to everyday objects and design, prototype and manufacture physical products almost as quickly as digital experiences? My work is a journey towards attempting to let some of this happen.

The possibility of linking paper to digital information is enhanced by recent developments in printed electronics. In this article we report the design and evaluation of a local newspaper augmented with capacitive touch regions and an embedded Bluetooth chip working with an adjunct device. These allowed the interactive playback of associated audio and the registration of manual voting actions on the web. Design conventions inherited from paper and the web were explored by showing four different versions of an interactive newspaper to 16 community residents. The diverse responses of residents are described, outlining the potential of the approach for local journalism and recommendations for the design of interactive newsprint.