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The great debate over the future of news is missing some voices.

I'm talking about readers, viewers, users, community members -- the people journalism serves.

Their absence from our wither-journalism confabs limits our ability to understand how they value their news experiences -- which is different, I'm learning, than how they value news itself.

I heard a few of these voices recently in Ann Arbor, where my Poynter colleague Kelly McBride organized a community conversation about life without a newspaper as part of training provided by the Online News Association.

To her credit, McBride focused on areas "where other organizations can step in and serve the community" rather than bemoaning the loss of the Ann Arbor News, which shut down on July 23.

With advertising in the tank and recovery still a distant dream, at least in Detroit, the Detroit Free Press and Detroit News are looking elsewhere for a revenue boost.

Executives at the papers told me last week that they hope to double the revenue they receive from readers, shifting the traditional newspaper revenue split from 80 percent advertising and 20 percent circulation to 60-40 as part of their reduced home delivery plan.

It's a strategy that raises critical questions about the future of advertising. (My friend and former Free Press colleague Kirk Cheyfitz argues that the papers need to reinvent advertising before giving up on it). 
Read on for some of the personal side of the Detroit newspaper experiment.

The first official numbers are in on the Detroit newspaper experiment, showing declining readership and continued financial losses in a scenario that executives insist holds potential for turn-around in 2010.

By limiting delivery to three days a week, Detroit executives say they're much better positioned to survive Michigan's disastrous economy and chart a future for the papers.

By the end of 2010, the Detroit Free Press and the Detroit News expect readers to provide 40 percent of their revenue, a dramatic increase from the traditional newspaper revenue split of 80 percent advertising and 20 percent circulation.Figures to be released Monday will show circulation of the Sunday Detroit Free Press down 7.5 percent and sales of the Free Press and Detroit News off as much as 15 percent on some days during the week. The figures, provided by Janet Hasson, senior vice president for audience development and strategy, reflect the six months ending Sept. 30, compared with the same period in 2008.

What's most interesting and useful about "The Reconstruction of American Journalism" report issued by Len Downie and Michael Schudson Monday is not so much what it chronicles or recommends.

Look instead at what it's provoking.

My Poynter colleague, Rick Edmonds, and others have provided expert analysis of the report's diagnosis and prescriptions. They did that even before the rest of us were jamming office printers across the land with nearly 100 pages documenting what the authors characterize as American journalism's "transformational moment."

It's a moment in which they assert "the era of dominant newspapers and influential network news divisions is rapidly giving way to one in which the gathering and distribution of news is more widely dispersed."

So, too, with their own report. Credit somebody at the Columbia Journalism Review -- and the school that runs it -- with understanding that from the start.

Read on for seven ideas about the future of news provoked by the Downie-Schudson report.