Two dozen smart and experienced people who actually run newspapers were here at Poynter recently for a conference about the future of news -- and how to get there. You can sample below what some of them wrote at the conclusion of the event. Here is my own (non-conforming) take:

RELATED RESOURCES

Interested in finding out more about the future of news? Here are two essays by conference leaders: The Future of News: New Relationships, New Pressures, New Potential by Gregory Favre Keys to the Future: News as Watchdog, as Trusted Agent, as Useful Tool by David Zeeck

A bright future for newspapers depends on two things that may sound the same but are actually different:

(1)  Editors and newsroom staff must continue as the primary news providers in their communities, adapting and delivering reports on multiple platforms, innovating in form, voice, variety and audience-focused content.

(2)  As businesses, newspapers must generate new sources of income as traditional ones fade. That includes online display advertising, rich and competitive local classified, local search, other online income and multiple niche publications. They must also get the best results -- discovering new lines of business and holding on to the old -- in the paper edition.

This implies some redefinition of business/news roles and dynamics. Editors might NOT be right in thinking that going with the gradual audience flow to the Web is sufficient. It is necessary, but not sufficient. Ownership needs to stay on board for high-end, watchdog public-service journalism. The business side needs to be responsible for generating income and for balancing earnings against needed investments in a tough transitional period.

This is not to say we should cling to the old wall separating the business and news sides of the industry. But perhaps there will be some return to traditional roles and parallel tracks: We make the money. You create great journalism on multiple platforms. If that happens, such trends as news staff cuts, excessive margins, the editor as a business person and determining what revenue attaches to what content might all soon fade as workable solutions.

But, as Dennis Miller says, I could be wrong. Mid-course corrections are certainly to be expected, since we are only in the early stages of serious work on the transition.


There is no question that editors are in a proactive mode these days on all matters Internet and interactive. That sure beats the posture of a few years back, when online endeavors were lumped with contract printing as "other" on the balance sheet and held little interest for top editors.

REFLECTIONS FROM THE CONFERENCE

Before they headed back to their newsrooms, the editors, publishers and news researchers who attended the Future of News conference at Poynter in May composed short reflections on what we can look forward to in the news business. Some of the comments have been trimmed to avoid repetition. Click on the links below to see what they think, in their own words: - Challenging the Conventional Wisdom, by Byron Calame - Toward a Definition of News, by David Zeeck - The Value Proportion at Its Core, by Howard Weaver - Future of News Is Secure; Future of News Organizations Is Not, by Clark Hoyt - A Lesson from Hurricane Coverage: We Can Be Indispensibe, by Sharon Rosenhause -  Writing Our Own Future and Paddling Like Hell, by Carl Redman -  No Longer the Gatekeepers, but..., by Peter Bhatia - It's All About the Culture, by Gary Kebbel - Needed: Talent, Training & Leadership, by Wes Turner - Sharing the Responsibilities of News, by Bob Zaltsberg - Job One: Deciding How Best to Tell Each Story, by Marty Kaiser - Shift the Culture: From Reactive to Anticipatory, by Joe Pepe - Get Nimble, Regain Lost Ground, by Henry Freeman - Focus on Quality, Not Platform, by Ron Royhab - Internet Just One Stop in the Evolution of News, by David Shribman - Profitability & Usefulness, by Bennie Ivory

But as I listened to these editors and publishers at Poynter, I thought I heard a leap of faith: That where editorial attention turns, audience and dollars will surely follow. There were more than a few expressions of old-time religion that news is "inevitable."

I'm not so sure. It reminds me of a conversation I had a few years ago with a Disney executive who said the company was having a progressively tougher time getting theme-park rides made, because hand-lathing is a dying craft. Once the underlying demand for lathe work faded in home-building, only 60-year-olds continued to do the work.

In a mega-philosophical sense, people will always want the news. But the craft, as taught at Poynter and practiced by the professionals at 1,500 newspapers in the U.S., could end up much diminished unless economic models with more pep are invented over the next decade.

In the Future of News session I moderated, Tom Rosenstiel's presentation struck a chord because he provided some elegant and practical thinking about elements with competitive value that editors have under their direct control in an age of information overload.

I was also struck by a comment from Harvard Business School professor Clark Gilbert, who said he believes a reluctance to innovate is more pronounced now on the business side than among editors.  Similarly, Paul Ginocchio, the Deutsche Bank analyst, said the best thing newspapers could do next would be to hire new sales staffs.

Clark Hoyt, concluding his term as editor of Knight Ridder's Washington bureau, shared some of my perspective in his wrap-up essay. He argued that news organizations need to crack the nub of their business problem -- the notion that the online product isn't as lucrative as print -- or their future is not certain. Howard Weaver, vice president of news at the nation's second largest chain, McClatchy, also split the problem in two, but simply expressed confidence that his business-side colleagues can solve their half.

With 6 percent of revenue online and that segment of the business growing at 30 percent plus annually, it makes all kinds of sense for newspapers to invest in online development. But, to me, neglecting the source of 94 percent of the revenue or encouraging the migration of audience from the paper to the Web doesn't. Walking away from the print edition, as some progressive thinkers now propose, would be a wild gamble.

Here is a small sample of how the business side of online news remains every bit as much under construction as its content and design. There has always been some sleight of hand in talking about unique visitors per month as if that were a meaningful measure of audience reach for advertisers.

It turns out, according a fine essay earlier this year by Northwestern University's Rich Gordon, that the unique-visitor count itself is badly flawed. One methodology treats visits from different computers (say, home and work) as "unique." Another basically misses the at-work market, a significant source of newspaper site visits.

The good news, Gordon reports, is that some newspaper companies, seeing those flaws, are starting over and are identifying a substantial cadre of "heavy use" visitors who visit four or five times a week and hop to the site four or five times a day -- in other words, true online readers. Combine good numbers on the size of that group with click analysis of how they use advertising on-site, and we could be headed up the path of making online ad buys more valuable.


I missed the first night of the Future of News conference, but was told by Poynter colleagues that the conversation got testy between print and online execs.

Tim McNulty, public editor of the Chicago Tribune -- invited to observe and comment on the conference -- noted in his closing remarks "an undercurrent of resentment." Maybe we all need "to go to a sweat lodge," he joked, to unload the residual bad feelings.

I mention these sidelights because mid-2006 still finds some of the same old, same old divisions, even as ramping up online content has become a central focus of newsrooms. Many news executives still see the digerati as dogmatic, impractical and blasé about some of the basics of accuracy and attribution. Many of those with a whole-hearted online vision think the industry is moving, but not nearly fast enough or knowledgeably enough.

The schism got a public airing in a pair of pieces about Editor & Publisher's annual Interactive Media Conference -- one by consultant Vin Crosbie, the other by Forbes.com editor Paul Maidment. Both made merry over the comment of one editor there: "I don't know what to do, but I'm ready to do it." Is that a confession of cluelessness or what?

I think that perspective is a little harsh and unduly hostile. The editors at our Poynter conference were eager for examples of best practices that they could take home to their papers. The trouble is that consensus best practices -- especially with a proven business payoff -- are hard to find as yet.

So they are left with the broad strategy of trying to attract more visits and getting the visitors to stay longer, with a fuller business model to follow. Poynter faculty and staff found, on a reconnaissance survey of more than a dozen news organizations this spring, that everyone now embraces the need to get breaking news online and to experiment with the rich panoply of new forms -- audio, video, podcasts, blogs, photo galleries, Flash, etc. That's still not sexy enough for those eager to dump the 94 percent of the business still paying the bills, but it is a start.

In early 2005, you could have stumped the majority of an audience of editors or news executives with questions such as: Who is Craig Newmark? Or what is Wikipedia?  We have progressed quickly, but editors still know that they and the newsrooms they direct are on a steep learning curve. They need to know more about the size and behavior of online audiences, more about young readers, more about what is out there and popular on the Internet, news or non-news. This isn't a case where you can learn first and do later; it's both, together, on the fly.

Just before the conference participants wrote their summary essays, my colleague Jill Geisler conducted a session proposing a leadership style, borrowed from a pair of Stanford professors, for "fast and effective change." Don't talk about how long it is going to take -- that's de-motivating. Sell the necessary direction of change, even if the outcome is not known. Project confidence -- even overconfidence -- knowing that updating will be necessary.

There is a flavor of all that in the essays that follow. But make no mistake that most editors and publishers also recognize the devil in the details.