When a couple of a dozen journalists gathered at the Poynter Institute last month to discuss the future of news, some brought with them reasons for concern.

"We're losing readers," said one.

"Is there room for news?" asked another as he posed an unpleasant alternative: "Are we going to sink into a universe of only opinions and blogs?"

A third person said this: "I think Rush Limbaugh is the new [Sen. Joseph] McCarthy. I'm concerned that people don't trust us anymore."

In every newsroom in America, we feel similar worries.

But others saw a relatively bright future, albeit one tilting toward the Internet and filled with change:

• "In some ways I think this is the golden age of local news. We have to figure out how to capitalize on that."
• "We have a real problem with subscription newspapers, but no problem for the future of news. Demand is higher than it's ever been."
• "The future of news is exciting; it's limitless. We have the tools now to connect with people we've never had before."
• "The world has always been about change. We have to learn to change as rapidly as the world does."
• "It's all about total audience, not who puts a quarter in the box."

One participant was Paul Ginocchio, a stock analyst for Deutsche Bank. He's a realist about the difficulties newspapers face, but he said he also sees a hopeful turn among newspaper journalists.

"I was at a similar gathering of editors a year ago," Ginocchio told me, "and the feeling was completely different."

Then, he said, editors seemed fearful of the future, distressed about what might happen to newspapers. A year later, they seem more confident and excited about what lies ahead, he said.

We all know the reasons for concern, so let me share with you two things I heard at Poynter that pointed toward a brighter future of news.

News of Value on the Internet

We all know that some news, primarily national and international news, is a commodity on the Internet. It's everywhere, and it's free. We worry we'll never be able to charge for any news on the Web.

But Tom Rosenstiel of the Project for Excellence in Journalism shared with us his vision of non-commodity news -- news with a value worth paying for online -- if we learn to maximize the attributes of the new medium. His top five picks for value:

1. First was what he called "sense-making news," or "news that makes the tumblers click." Rosenstiel said this requires that newsrooms possess more expertise in the subjects they cover, and are places that nurture debate and intellectual ferment. These stories make sense or bring order and context to a stream of other stories that may have previously seemed unrelated.
2. "Things no one else does." For many newspapers, this is local news, perhaps city zoning coverage or prep sports. "This is your strongest position," said Rosenstiel. "It requires boots on the ground." For The Wall Street Journal, it's coverage of business and the markets that allows them to charge a hefty internet subscription fee. For The New York Times, it's the columnists and archives (hence, TimesSelect).
3. "Uncovering things" was Rosenstiel's third example. This is true watchdog reporting, news that would never be reported without us.
4. Next was being  a "local forum," a strong position that only local newspapers now fulfill. Craigslist creates a sort of commercial forum, but our journalism values make ours different and special. 
   
5. Finally, Rosenstiel talked about using the internet to reinforce and extend a newspaper's unique personality (or in marketing-speak, its brand) in its community.

"Are you thinking about reinventing and making a new journalism," Rosenstiel asked, "or are you looking backward worrying about fewer resources and the things you can't do in print?

"Imagine the possibilities," he said. "When you approach it that way, it changes the way people think about the future."

New Approaches to Online News

I also heard some interesting new thinking about online news.

"One thing that makes me hopeful [about the future of news] is that watchdog [coverage] rivals sex in reader interest" on the Internet, said Kinsey Wilson, executive editor of USA Today.

For too long, he said, news executives were mesmerized by the statistics of Internet use. Instead, we should watch what mesmerizes readers -- not just which pages they hit, but how much time they spend and how deeply they explore information.

"It's not just about hits and impressions," he said. "It's about engagement."

Rusty Coats, general manager of TBO.com (Media General's Tampa Bay Web site), said the ability of the Internet to tell us how readers are using the medium is a way to boost engagement.

"How do we use this technology to inform our journalism?" he asked. "We need to recognize and respond to what readers are doing, whatever we think of it."

Rosenstiel advocated that newsrooms become expert in producing stories in each new medium. As news companies try new niche and online products he said newsrooms should seize those as opportunities and not let the business side control that content. He sees the future as a time to "energize, protect, defend and extend" what we do.

Wilson also sees a future for news that combines news from journalists with news from citizens: "In the future, we'll organize information" much as we do now, he said. "We'll organize the stuff we produce and the stuff we buy [from freelancers or syndicates], but also -- this is new -- the stuff we don't own or control" -- that is news produced by others, including bloggers.

Howard Weaver, vice president for news at McClatchy, said much the same thing: "It's not just professional news or citizen journalism; sometimes it's professional news AND citizen journalism. You can use some professional standards with citizen input" to produce a whole new kind of news.

For Howard Finberg, Poynter's director of interactive learning, the Web is leading us to a different future. Finberg still believes in the trend toward customized news, but also sees an important role for a news organization that acts as "trusted agent" for a user, that brings increased and interrelated layers of information to the story.

"It's about making news more of a one-to-one product," said Finberg. "We need to figure out how to produce what a single consumer needs to survive in a complex world."

Clark Gilbert, a business professor at the Harvard Business School, said success on the Internet means seeing ourselves as doing a different job than the one newspapers have traditionally done.

"Teresa Hanafin, the editor of boston.com, was initially frustrated by the term 'users,'" said Gilbert. "Now, [with more experience in the medium,] she realizes people read the paper but use the Internet. That's a very different model."

Learning more about that new news model, and following it, is a migration that will lead to more change in newsrooms. But also a richer future.

Finberg said success on the Internet is always a moving target, and illustrated the point by tweaking a familiar maxim: "It's not about search" any more, he said, "it's about find."