So here I am on the right coast (that’s right as in opposite of left, not a value judgment) at an American Press Institute conference about the changing nature of newspapers. We’re told we have to change to survive and there’s not much argument from the assembled 48 editors, who came here from Oregon, Texas, Illinois and a whole lot of other far-flung places, including Spain.

We’re told — and already knew — that we still have a loyal newspaper audience, but much of it is a middle-age and older audience. So we need to reach out to the rest of the world by spending more time and resources on line, by providing news as it happens, rather than only once a day, and by providing news and information in different ways and through multiple media.

A year ago, I might have wondered how we, at a relatively small newspaper in Oregon, could possibly pull that off. Today, I sit in a cafe in Virginia that offers free wireless, writing a blog after having just watched a multi-media slide show on the Mail Tribune’s Web site. All things are possible!

If you haven’t seen the slide show, check it out. Photographer Jim Craven accompanied a barbershop quartet on its rounds as the four men delivered singing Valentines on Wednesday. He took a lot of photos, recorded the quartet as they sang, mixed it together with some text and produced a really nice piece. You can get to the slide show by clicking on the Multimedia link in the left-hand column on our home page or, better yet, by clicking right here.

It is a brave new world, and it looks like it might be fun, too. See you back on the left coast in short order.

This entry was posted on Friday, February 16th, 2007 at 4:00 pm and is filed under From the Editor. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.