As Alan Joyce's Jetstar carries me down to Melbourne for PacPrint, the lady on my left is reading a Domain supplement she's saved from Saturday's paper.

Either that, of course, or she's only just got it, as despite the Brisbane presses, it seems to take an inordinate time for the Fairfax metros to find their way through.

I mention PacPrint - yes, I know I should be in New York for INMA, but I haven't yet found a way of teleporting myself to two places at once - for a reason. It was at one of the Australian print trade shows, eight, maybe 12 years ago, that a forum panellist from Fairfax described the main book (the bit with the news in it) as "a wrapper we stuff supplements into".

In the days before I moved to Queensland, I recall midweek issues with 'must-have' supplements including the Green Guide - a TV listing guide then actually printed in green newsprint - and a gig guide which was also essential reading.

Those were the days (which Brian Powers, currently leading the H&H takeover bid, will recall) when the famous classified "rivers of gold" were still flowing.

Not any more, of course, but neither was there an internet on which readers could search for houses, cars and jobs so much more conveniently.

Even on glossy stock, Domain's 92 pages - property at the front and 'New Living' at the back - is a shadow of its former self. And certainly of the wad of dead tree the classified sections of The Age and the Sydney Morning Herald once were.

But it's hard to imagine Domain, the leading (if not top) property brand born of the metro supplements, being separated from their parents, as Fairfax chief executive Greg Hywood suggests.

I've been to plenty of conference sessions where the value of building a diversified publishing business is espoused. But few where you flog off the golden egg.

At least that's not on the (professed) agenda of the current Fairfax suitors... but that could change.

By the way, on the minimalist Jetstar service, there are no screens to gawp at on the 125-minute journey. No internet, but smartphones and tablets are of course permitted in flight mode; the only one I can see is on solitaire.

My own print reading for the trip is the media section of The Australian, where an interview with Laura Brown, the Australian editor-in-chief of Time's Instyle is a delight. She's also forecasting a renaissance for print.

The lady at my left has the upmarket Wish glossy from The Australian and another large glossy supplement on her lap, as have two more women in my immediate line of sight.

Maybe Brown - and even still partially the PacPrint panellist - are right, and there's hope for print yet.

Never the same, however. Life isn't like that. We've landed now, and as we do so, all the phones come back on. One the journey into the city, the once hallowed halls of The Age Print Centre on the Tullamarine freeway has been sold as a car dealership, the paper printed in rural Ballarat instead.

A new owner - and the consensus is that there will be one, just in time perhaps - may breathe new life into Fairfax... and while there's life there's hope.