A Moral to This Story

OK, let's calculate the carnage. Financial meltdown continues around the world. Check. Senate puts the kibosh on bailout for Detroit automakers. Check. Stock markets in turmoil. Check. Barack Obama enmeshed by scandal. Check?

On its surface, item No. 4 doesn't come across as particularly newsworthy other than for its entertainment value. Sure, it's not really cricket to put a Senate seat up for auction, as Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich is alleged to have done -- Obama's vacated seat, for that matter. And it's pretty uncouth for a politician to have such a potty mouth, using language usually heard in newsrooms around deadline.

But if there is any real juice to this story, I think it is in the fact that, according to the criminal complaint filed by U.S. Attorney Patrick J. Fitzgerald, Blago pulled a no-no: He wanted certain members of the Chicago Tribune's editorial board fired as a quid pro quo for blessing the sale of Wrigley Field, which the newspaper's parent company, Tribune, owns. In the complaint, an unnamed financial adviser gives the governor a version of "we'll get back to you."

There are some lessons here that we in the news media should contemplate as this annus horribilis draws to a close but another, perhaps more unsettling to the news business than this one has been, awaits us in 2009.

Writing as the story was breaking, Kathleen Parker looked at Chicago's notorious culture of corruption and Tribune's bottom-line problems (the company had filed for bankruptcy protection the day before) and put the two together. Her conclusion: "The bums are winning. And the corrupt politicians are, too."

Later, she added: "Apparently, the caveat that one should never do battle with someone who buys ink by the barrel has been rendered meaningless by 'financial advisers' in the Tribune Tower, where (real estate mogul Sam) Zell's yearlong reign of error is leading one of the nation's greatest newspaper companies to ruin."

The unnamed financial adviser (who turns out to be Nils Larsen, a Tribune Co. executive vice president) should never have implied, no matter how vaguely, that Blagojevich's request might be granted. But that's water under the bridge, and now, according to the Chicago Tribune, part of the ongoing Fitzgerald investigation.

Moreover, what we should be celebrating is what didn't happen. Nobody got fired. In fact, it appears that no one even got the word that Blago had his sights set on the editorial board. It was news to Editorial Page Editor Bruce Dold, about as solid and by-the-book as journalists come. And it was news to his deputy, John McCormick, whose editorials, including some calling for the governor's impeachment, were apparently singled out. And here's a bit of delicious irony -- on Friday, the Tribune in an editorial called on Blagojevich to step down.

"We stopped trying to apply logic to Blagojevich's thought processes a long time ago, even before he thought he could cut a business deal to get us all fired," the editorial said.

Irony aside, a story like the Blagojevich scandal isn't going to save the news business anymore than Obama's election victory produced a (very) temporary boost in circulation at some papers (see my post here). It's a much more difficult task to peer into the future and find a role for a form of communication that has been losing readers and advertisers since at least the beginning of the television era and particularly since the advent of the Internet. Some companies are going to be wise enough to figure it out, and others obviously won't.

But if you start with the proposition that you have a corps of devoted and professional men and women who will go to just about any length to get the story and tell it to your readers, then, well, the smart money might say you will figure it out. No one needs to tell this to Sam Zell these days. But other publishers struggling to get out of the morass might want to consult the lessons learned.

(Full disclosure: I have a small amount of pension money in Tribune Co., due to my work at the Los Angeles Times, which then was owned by the Chandler family.)

Now, back to Obama and that first brush with scandal, as some in the media have been calling it. Investigations, especially if they are being run by Patrick Fitzgerald, often have unintended consequences (ask Judith Miller, formerly of The New York Times). And Blagojevich's alleged attempt to pressure Tribune Co. into firing editorial writers certainly has been the big surprise in this Fitzpatrick probe.

Those who believe there is a bigger fish awaiting the hook haven't pulled in their reels, and Eugene Robinson, who has closely followed Obama's rise, thinks this should give him cause for concern.

"The scandal involves Obama in only the most tangential way, as far as anyone knows, and actually seems to cast him in a favorable light." Robinson writes. "But the longer he leaves obvious questions unanswered, the longer the president-elect will have to talk about the seamier side of Illinois politics rather than initiatives such as saving the U.S. auto industry or revamping health care."

After noting some of those obvious questions, Robinson states: "But all this seems awfully coy. It's obvious that the president-elect would have an interest in who was appointed to the Senate from his home state -- for good reason. For that matter, it would be unusual if the president-elect didn't have a preferred candidate. The normal thing would be for Obama's staff to talk to Blagojevich's staff -- and, unless prosecutors have asked him not to, I don't understand why Obama hasn't stated this simple fact."

Not an unreasonable request, especially if, to consult my checklist at the beginning of this post, we are to keep are eyes on items one through three, not fixated on item four.

James Hill is managing editor of The Washington Post Writers Group.

When Terror Strikes

The element of surprise is what puts the terror in terrorism. Yet when assessments of the mayhem begin, all too often the perpetrators -- and their motives -- are not so surprising after all.

Such was the case over the long Thanksgiving weekend when gunmen carried out a murderous three-day rampage in India's financial capital of Mumbai. The surprise was in the audacity of the terrorists' sea-borne attack; the familiarity was in the links to a well-known terrorist organization that in 2001 had launched a similarly brazen assault on the Indian parliament.

Slate's media critic, Jack Shafer, was right to offer up his observation that in the early hours of the Mumbai bloodbath, much of what was passed off as news turned out to be, in Shafer's choice of words, "crap."

He writes: "The latest example of crap masquerading as authoritative news comes to us from the pens and microphones of the reporters covering the Mumbai massacre: Reading the first wave of Mumbai stories against the second reveals how rough the first rough draft of history can be. Respected, major media outlets produced contradictory accounts of the carnage and its aftermath."

Magnifying this is a 24-hour news cycle that demands details -- instantly. Too often, following through on those "details" turns into a wild goose chase. Not to dispute Shafer's thesis, I still think that by the time the siege ended, reputable news organizations had done a pretty sterling job of reporting.

But back to my point, these news events are become depressingly all too familiar. The question now, as always, is: What can you do about it? And here's where I would answer: Be informed, be very informed.

I say this because we at The Writers Group work with three columnists who not only are very informed, but have long displayed a canny ability to work their sources and communicate their knowledge to mass audiences -- exactly the type of reporting and analysis that is so desperately needed in these unsettling times.

Jim Hoagland, David Ignatius and Michael Gerson provided columns that, in the wake of the Mumbai attacks, looked at the balance of power in south Asia where two neighboring and long-hostile states both have nuclear weapons, what the attacks told us about our own preparations to ward off a similar assault, and the options of prosecuting a war on terror that will fall to the Barack Obama administration. Readers and policymakers alike have taken note.

Hoagland, The Washington Post's Pulitzer Prize-winning foreign affairs columnist and senior foreign correspondent, had already written a column on Pakistan under new President Azif Ali Zardari, which was transmitted the day before Thanksgiving to his client newspapers and Web sites. News of the attacks began to break as the column was being distributed, but details at the time were much too vague to update at the time.

Most news organizations operate with skeleton staffs on national holidays. And, to return to Shafer for a moment, the first draft on that holiday morning was still pretty rough. But Hoagland was working the phones. By Friday morning, he was able to incorporate his reporting into the Zardari column, raising the specter that what progress the new president was making to bring stability to his part of the subcontinent might already be at risk because of the Mumbai slaughter. The updated version -- a "writethru" in our parlance -- was sent to clients for Sunday release.

Ignatius, a Post associate editor with extensive contacts both overseas and within the American national security establishment, also was working the phones, trying for both a sense of how such a small band of terrorists could deal such a devastating blow and, perhaps more importantly, the possibility of such a scenario happening in the United States. His column should make anyone shudder.

Gerson, a Post columnist and fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, drew his perspective on the attacks from an inside straight: his years working as chief speechwriter for President George W. Bush. Noting that it has been seven years since 9/11, Gerson laid out the extraordinary efforts that a president must take to protect Americans --- a task just as important today as it was in the hours following the airborne assaults on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

The lessons learned by the Bush administration -- its successes as well as its missteps -- will have to be lessons learned by the Obama administration. As Gerson concluded, "By all accounts, the president-elect is taking the time to examine these issues -- and is putting serious thinkers in charge of his review. Mumbai is a timely reminder that the stakes get no higher."

And that should be a familiar, not surprising, reminder of the value of accurate information and solid reporting as well.

James Hill is managing editor of The Washington Post Writers Group.

The Ups and Downs of Syndication

On Nov. 11, Writers Group editorial director Alan Shearer addressed columnists belonging to the Trotter Group as they gathered in Washington for their annual convention. His remarks are featured below.

Joe Davidson and Kevin Merida (both of The Washington Post) told me the topic is "The Ins and Outs of Syndication."

In the way things are done in Washington, I'm not going to answer that precise question. I'm changing the topic a bit -- to "The Ups and Downs of Syndication." And I think you probably can guess where this is going.

We're down -- not in spirit, never -- but in business terms. We have about as many features sold in publications as we did a few years ago, but it's a different landscape because most of the larger newspapers essentially are on the sidelines. Cuts in space and content are so deep in places such as Philadelphia, Boston, Newark, L.A., Chicago and elsewhere that I sometimes wonder what the future may bring.

Having said that, if you look at medium and smaller markets, you find publications that are more vigorous and willing to try new things. The editorial page editor in particular is always searching for the next good article to put in the paper. Doesn't always mean that he can get the money to buy it, but if he wants it badly enough, he'll find a way.

Our most widely published columnists are
George Will,
Kathleen Parker,
Ellen Goodman,
David Broder,
Charles Krauthammer,
Ruben Navarrette,
Gene Robinson
and E.J. Dionne, in that order.

Though they're not on op-ed pages, Carolyn Hax and Michelle Singletary have the numbers to belong in that group.

Of late, we've had tremendous success selling editorial cartoonists as a package -- due to two factors, I believe. One, our four cartoonists cover the political spectrum with exceedingly original styles -- three of them are Pulitzer winners. Number two, staff cartoonists keep losing their jobs.

But that's not all we do at The Writers Group. We develop and sell comic strips and other features, and we manage photo and text reprints for The Washington Post.

----

Now, Joe and Kevin both asked me to talk about the economics of the business -- what editors buy, and, most especially, what you would get paid.

I usually tell people starting out that at first, you'll make about enough to buy a better brand of beer ... occasionally.

It's tough out there, especially now with the collective holding of breath in our industry, waiting for the economy to improve and praying for the return of the classified ad.

But if you've got something to say,

that no one else is saying,

and you can write with a clarity and turn of phrase that maintains interest,

-- and you write about topics that appeal to readers across the country, and even around the world

-- and you have demonstrated that you can meet unforgiving deadlines, week end and out ...

It still might not be enough. Unless, that is, you bring along a built-in following.

There are no secrets on how to become syndicated -- except there is one strategy that works. And I'm going to tell it to you now.

Do it yourself. Self-syndicate.

Thanks to e-mail, it's not that hard.

Get several good samples together. E-mail editorial page editors in certain cities. You can Google for newspaper Web sites and e-mail addresses; and you can find names and addresses in the Editor and Publisher Yearbook. Tell editors you'd like to send columns on a regular basis -- ideally, once a week -- and they're free to use them. They'll pay normal space rates for anything they publish. Be sure to include contact information, and ask them to get in touch with questions or comments. Be welcoming of this.

Just don't send the same column to competing newspapers. And, most important, don't write more than 750 words. Preferably, the low sevens.

So you build a list of e-mail prospects. Each week, say you write a column on Monday, polish Tuesday morning, then at noon send to 15, 20, 50 editorial page editors. You'll know you're making progress if they start asking for a picture. And if you have a dozen or more publishing your columns regularly, you'll have a strong argument for a syndicate. Keep lists of what was published and where. If you're already writing a column that's going out on a wire, keep track through Google alerts, whatever, where your column is published. The Writers Group has recently subscribed to something called Press Display, which sends us PDFs when one of our writers had been named. Kathleen Parker got thousands of hits worldwide for her Sarah Palin columns. Save clips, keep records and statistics.

One of the oddest parts of all this is an attitude among some editors that can only be described as warped. One, for example, might pay you $75 to $85 for one column. But pay me only $8 per week for four columns a month. I think it's because the freelance, or one-shot, budgets are a separate category, under the radar of management. We have a few overseas publications that pay more in total one-shots than it would cost them to subscribe.

So then you come to me, or one of my competitors, with a list of clients who publish you regularly. You now have a good argument for syndication.

----

In our case, we split gross income 50-50, with no costs of any kind charged back to you. We handle all sales, promotion, marketing, delivery and billing. We work with every writer in checking all facts, and discussing phrasing and content -- always with the writer on the phone. Changes are made collaboratively. Columns go through three editors here, the final one approaching the column fresh, as an everyday reader would. I can proudly say that we keep mistakes to a minimum. And I still have vivid nightmares of the few that get by.

"What do editors want?" I'm often asked.

I have the answer: Nothing.

By force of nature -- and of the current economy -- today's newspaper editor is conditioned to want nothing he has to pay for. But pay he will, for a column that informs, enlightens and teaches us something. One that moves us to laugh, to cry, or even just to think in a new way.

----

We have a saying at The Writers Group: Predictability killeth the column. So many out there these days are writing to a constituency. Their columns become so predictable, as soon as you see the topic, you pretty much know how they will come out.

The foundation of every good column is Reporting, pure and simple. Remember what the great columnist Joe Alsop used to say: "Every column must offer one new fact," that no one else has reported. "NO STAND-ALONE OPINIONIZING IS ALLOWED."

Think about this a moment. When you watch or listen to talk shows, ask yourself after a while whether you've learned anything. Most of these shows simply shout to a constituency. I guess if they enforced Joe Alsop's "NO-STAND-ALONE-OPINIONIZING RULE, there wouldn't be a constituency to shout to. Columnist Bob Samuelson once said about such bloviators, "MAYBE WRONG BUT NEVER IN DOUBT."

----

Many successful columnists have told me over the years that when they meet people, they often hear, "I so envy you. All you have to do is come with one or two opinions a week. Such a cushy job."

And indeed it would be, if all we had to write was a few hundred words of pure opinion. Despite what some of your bosses might believe, writing a twice-a-week column is a full-time job.

You have to get a topic, report on that topic to help inform you about what you think, and then craft what is, by any measure, a work of art that teaches, informs and moves people to some sort of emotion.

My longtime friend and former columnist Ed Yoder told me he used to let his work simmer overnight; then look at it fresh the next day. If it couldn't wait that long, Ed said he would go to a movie, or even just get up from the desk and put on some music, pop in a DVD -- anything to take his mind away.

Then go back and look again -- you may be surprised at what you find, and you'll see ways to make a column better better.

----

On a personal note, I've had the time of my life working with writers every day. They rise to the top of a very competitive business. Every day, I am proud to see our work in the Post and other newspapers.

I go away thinking ... we moved a few people today.

We may not have changed many minds, but at the very least, our readers learned something. We made a difference.

----

By all means, keep writing. The work you do is important -- and I, for one, am pulling for you every step of the way.

Alan Shearer is editorial director of The Washington Post Writers Group.

Main Street Regulars

The global economic crisis that brought presidents, prime ministers and kings to Washington for the Group of 20 summit has quite rightly kept the media focused on the big picture.

But as the crisis was unfolding in the closing weeks of the just-concluded presidential campaign, it was also obvious that when governments move to rescue tottering financial institutions, a lot of smaller pictures also come into play. Wall Street versus Main Street has become a familiar refrain, now manifesting itself in the debate over whether bailout funds should be directed toward U.S. automakers.

Columnists Kenneth R. Harney and Michelle Singletary don't do Detroit, but they both do Main Street, offering valuable insight as to how consumers can navigate their way through these trying economic times. Harney's award-winning column, "The Nation's Housing," has long been the gold standard of real estate reporting, while Singletary's consumer finance column, "The Color of Money," examines the bread-and-butter issues that the folks sitting around the kitchen table need to factor into their family budgets. Among her many honors, Singletary received a Best in Business Journalism award this year from the Society of American Business Editors and Writers.

Both have used their reportorial skills and called on their deep reservoir of sources to be considerably ahead of the pack in explaining the crisis and its impact on Main Street. As banks began to fail and the government nationalized mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, each in jeopardy because of the collapse of the subprime mortgage market, Harney delivered the rather stunning assessment that mortgage money was still available, and how and where to tap it.

An earlier column explained "How the Rescue Affects Homeowners."

Singletary, meanwhile, has been advising consumers to get their credit in order, avoid unnecessary purchases (she includes cell phones, other electronic gadgets and cable TV in this category) and put away money for the long haul. She's also looked at the bailout plans as they have developed, offering this assessment -- "Bailout Needs a Bridge to Main Street."

It's becoming obvious that this is a crisis we're not likely to solve anytime soon, despite all efforts. With such mind-boggling amounts of money being tossed about as needed lifelines, with markets taking such huge swings from week to week, and with so much other uncertainty, the big picture can be pretty depressing.

Harney and Singletary can't cure those blues. But their columns can help readers protect their wallets -- and that seems to me to be issue No. 1 on Main Street.

James Hill is managing editor of The Washington Post Writers Group.

'Don't Get Me Rewrite'

Daily journalism is often described as the first draft of history. Wednesday morning, newspaper readers woke up to discover their first draft was a keeper. And how.

As I arrived at The Washington Post, a line stretched half a block down the sidewalk -- people trying to buy a copy of the Final edition, the one with the banner headline: "Obama Makes History." Inside the building, there wasn't a copy of the paper to be found. The same thing was happening at other newspapers.

Every four years, I'm struck by the normalcy of our elections. A spirited, some say too long, campaign comes to a close. The nation votes. And, with the exception of 2000, we get up the next morning and go about our lives. Sometimes the government changes, sometimes it doesn't. Didn't matter.

This time it did. The expression I think we've most heard to describe the election of an African-American to the nation's highest office was "never thought I'd see it in my lifetime." And that's not a feeling of regret, either. It's a wonderment-of-it-all expression -- the reason so many people were lining up to buy commemorative editions of newspapers that would forever remind them that yes, Barack Obama did make history, and so did America.

In the days and weeks ahead, as the Obama campaign transitions into the Obama administration and begins to get its sea legs, much will be written about just how much change this election has produced. More importantly, the discussion will center on where a new administration will take the country, and just how many of the 46 percent who voted for John McCain will accept, and even encourage, the new president's leadership.

Much as I've enjoyed the campaign, I'm just as eagerly awaiting this coming debate. But let's just hang with the campaign for a moment, and savor some thoughts about what happened:

-- Media bias is a charge as old as the media, and it sure was a staple of this campaign. I'm in the business of opinion journalism, and our writers are paid to express their opinions, but I'm also one who finds the charge seriously off base. Reporters have it in their DNA to follow the story and from the moment Obama won the Iowa caucuses, it was evident this was going to be a big, big story. In retrospect, the news coverage didn't anticipate the country's reaction to such a historical shift (that's why we ran out of papers, folks).

-- Opinion journalism is a winner, and the country can't get enough of it. Some people think the gaggle on talk radio and cable television is the future of discourse, but I disagree. Our columnists didn't drive the debate this election, they interpreted and analyzed it -- from the left, middle, and right. And because of the range of the Internet, they were read by more people than ever (see these posts (1, 2) about Marie Cocco and Kathleen Parker if you don't know what "viral" is in the electronic era).

-- Newspapers need to rethink their rethinking. Romenesko daily brings more news of newspaper grief. Indeed, it is a terrible time for the industry, and no one can say where the bottom is. But I think the way out of this isn't by denying your audience the product they expect -- too often the result of earlier rethinking. Editor & Publisher reports that the American Press Institute has scheduled a Nov. 13 "summit conference" with newspaper CEOs to discuss how the industry can revive itself. I hope the fact that people were beating down their doors for a couple of days this week to buy newspapers sticks on them -- see this memo from The Washington Post's Paul Farhi, also on Romensko -- and a commitment-to-quality light bulb suddenly goes off in their heads.

Enough of the postmortem. I'll end with a salute to our writers and cartoonists who put so much of themselves into what our David S. Broder, the dean of Washington political correspondents, called "the best (campaign) I'd ever covered." I think it's safe to say they all felt that way.

Must Reading

Washington Post staff writer Wil Haygood is routinely honored as one of America's top feature writers. Take the time to read this gem all way through and you'll know why.

And the words of the late Marjorie Williams, our colleague at The Writers Group until her death in 2005, come back to life on Slate. So good to see her byline again -- a reminder of how much she is missed.

James Hill is managing editor of The Washington Post Writers Group.

Lighting the Way

As we cover this most fascinating of election seasons, we can't help but notice Kathleen Parker's emergence at the center of much of the debate. As I write this, her latest column, "Something About Sarah," is the No. 1 most-viewed article on all of washingtonpost.com, ahead of the tumbling stock market and the latest political news.

Parker has been vilified by many on the right who forget that she has always displayed a streak of independence. It's one of the things we like about Parker and all of our writers. They don't always write to a constituency, as so many in the marketplace do.

Criticism from a writer's so-called "base" happens occasionally. I believe it's because so many people -- in and out of the news business -- are used to he said/they said, with no middle ground. Years ago, when George F. Will found fault with the Republicans' "Contract With America," a number of his fans, including some newspaper opinion-page editors, asked me what had happened to Will? We thought he was conservative.

Will's reply: "It isn't conservative to leap into the darkness."

It reminded me of the day in November 1973 when Will, a new columnist in The Washington Post who would join the four-month-old Writers Group a few weeks later, wrote that the due process of impeachment would be the proper way to deal with Richard Nixon. I was a young reporter in this town, but I knew instantly what this column meant to the debate of that day

Three years ago, Will's column denouncing George W. Bush's Supreme Court nomination of Harriet Miers helped sink it quickly. Reminiscing recently, Will told me he thought that was one of the most important columns he ever wrote.

In Parker's case, you can trace the arc of her thinking about Palin, starting with the first column on Sept. 3 in which she saw the positive aspects of Palin's nomination, to the later ones in which Parker predicted that the Alaska governor would be a drain on the Republican ticket.

As Parker said in one television appearance, "I write what I think." And what is freethinking if not one of the pillars of our democracy? Why would anyone believe that any individual must always hew to a party line or a particular point of view?

Our business is loaded with the kind of columnists who, to borrow a phrase that the New York Times' Tom Friedman once used at a gathering of editors, offer "more heat than light." For many of these writers, you know what they're going to say because they've said it before. It's like talk radio transferred to opinion pages. Many of these shows offer nothing more than endless put-downs that do nothing more than rile and defile -- more heat than light.

Voltaire didn't actually say this, but most people think he did: "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it."

To those who seek to defile Kathleen Parker and others for not toeing a particular ideological line, think for a moment about what you are saying. Remember that our ancestors fought, bled and died to protect the basic freedoms that are sacrosanct in our democracy, including freedom of speech. And let's savor this terrific debate over the future of our country, the greatest on earth.

Alan Shearer is editorial director of The Washington Post Writers Group.

A Family Quarrel

There’s some truth to the thought that ideological quarrels are a bit like academic fights -- so vicious because the stakes are so small. Yet the one that is going on now among conservatives concerning the vice presidential qualifications of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin is no mere spat among tenured professors. The stakes are so high because of the office Palin aspires to, and the possibility that she might at some point have to ascend to the Oval Office.

We at The Writers Group aren’t watching this as disinterested observers; three of our columnists -- George F. Will, Charles Krauthammer and Kathleen Parker -- have at some point been pulled into the fray. Parker has come in for some especially venomous attacks, particularly for her column questioning the wisdom of John McCain’s choice of a governor only two years into her first term (I wrote about this Sept. 26, “Not-So-Positively Palin”), and again last week with her defense of writer Christopher Buckley’s decision to endorse Barack Obama. Buckley lost his column in National Review, the magazine founded by his father and revered by many as the bible of the modern conservative movement. NR says Buckley offered to resign; Buckley says he was fired -- it doesn’t matter.

The point I think that is largely being missed is not so much Buckley’s apostasy as his reasons for doing so. Elections don’t usually turn on endorsements from satirical writers, but the Buckley name certainly lent credibility to his action, gave it far more prominence than it would normally gain, and perhaps -- and this is a big perhaps -- allowed other conservatives the cover to jump ship as well.

Enter now Rich Lowry, National Review’s editor, to say to the conservative family, “Deep Breaths, Everyone!” In a posting Friday on National Review Online’s popular blog “The Corner," Lowry wrote:

“Peggy Noonan and Kathleen Parker take up the Christopher Buckley business today. In her Palin-centered column, Peggy says those 'whose thoughts lead them to criticism in this area are to be shunned, and accused of the lowest motives,' and then cites Christopher's resignation from his NR column as an example. Peggy is a busy person, so I suppose she hasn't had time to notice that Kathleen Parker's columns ripping Sarah Palin have appeared on NRO. That David Frum has aired his discontent with the Palin pick on NRO. That others of us -- Ramesh (Ponnuru) and even me (between my occasional bouts of rhapsodic gushing!) -- have criticized aspects of her performance. And that other writers on NRO have stuck up for Palin and pushed back against the critics. It's called debate. Now, I regret how some conservatives immediately question the motives of the critics of Palin, but it's equally regrettable that Noonan, Parker et al. are portraying most conservatives as irrational thugs. It makes you wonder: Who is really being overly emotional and deeply unfair in this intramural conservative debate? Which brings us naturally to Kathleen Parker's column today. Read and judge for yourself. Is this calm, cool deliberation? Or hyperbole worthy of a peeved e-mailer? (By the way, I hate that Kathleen got any abusive e-mails at all; it's a very unfortunate part of the world of the Web. But hate e-mail goes both ways. I wouldn't want to live for a minute with, say, Kathryn Lopez's or Jonah Goldberg’s inbox on any given day.) Finally, on Christopher, I already addressed it here. But he proffered a 'sincere offer' of resignation of his column that he had taken up temporarily while Mark Steyn was on hiatus. It struck us as a win-win: Chris would get out of a column we thought he wanted out of; we'd get Mark Steyn, who had recently returned to writing, back on our back page. We never imagined Chris would feel he’d been 'fatwa-ed.' In any case, Chris is still on NR's board, and is welcome to write pieces for us going forward, which I'm hoping he'll do after everyone, very much including the Noonans and Parkers of the world, takes a deep breath.”

I wouldn’t call Parker’s column the hyperbole worthy of a peeved e-mailer, but I do think Lowry’s general point is valid -- conservatives need to see this for what it is, a debate, and not as an attack from within on cherished principles.

Should McCain lose on Nov. 4, you can bet for sure that longer knives will come out as conservatives contemplate life again in the political wilderness. That will probably be for the good as well, as reassessments of political defeat tend to cleanse the ideological soul.

But I find this debate now to be particularly useful for a couple of reasons: one, because it offers voters options to consider as they make their own assessments of the respective presidential tickets, and two, this contest is still extremely tight, according to the tracking polls.

Indeed, the stakes are that high.

Must Reads

David Ignatius on “The Speech That Could Close the Deal,” Charles Krauthammer on who is playing the race card, Marie Cocco on “401(k)s Exposed,” Robert J. Samuelson on “The Engine of Mayhem,” and Michael Gerson on “Ambushed by History.”

James Hill is managing editor of The Washington Post Writers Group.

More Than Ever

One of the reasons I think the blogosphere has been able to have so much fun at the expense of the mainstream media (MSM) is that, despite 9/11 and two wars, we all were still living in the 1990s.

Until a few weeks ago, that is. If the outbreak of World War I in 1914 was the true beginning of the 20th century, as some historians contend, then surely what is likely to be named the Panic of 2008 is the beginning of the 21st. When the carnage of a housing and mortgage meltdown turned into a worldwide stampede from financial markets is finally assessed -- and when that day is, no one knows -- it will no doubt be safe to say that everything changed.

We're only beginning to understand, however, that what is called a transformative event is taking place. And that understanding is coming, because it is at our expense.

Back to the '90s for moment, an era I admit looks pretty inviting in retrospect. Markets were on the rise. The ownership society had become part of our national psyche. And our political system, although becoming increasingly polarized, didn't seem to have much effect on our happy-go-lucky way of life, one way or another.

Neither did most of our other institutions, the media among them. I'm not going to use this space to get into a discussion of how the media went off the rails. But there are plenty of signs that something serious happened -- and you can find them in circulation reports and viewership statistics and a whole lot of other metrics that evaluate an industry's health. If media were still stuck in the 1990s, readers and viewers were too -- we didn't have much effect on their lives.

I thought the blogosphere, one of the neatest things to develop on the Internet because an innovative nation found a new way to communicate, was a force for the good, and still do. But as Campaign 2008 comes mercifully to a close -- talk about something that feels like it began in the 1990s -- the blogosphere, dare I say, feels less relevant today than it was in, say, 2004, the last presidential election year.

I'm willing to give some Internet pundits credit for trying to keep the media on their toes. Certainly, every industry needs critics. But the overall tone of the political debate these days feels stale and forced. You can only read an ideological blog so long before you realize you have read it all before.

True, you could say that about the MSM as well. That was, after all, the blogosphere's complaint -- a valid one at that.

Yet, like stock market accounts, wipe this all off the table. We are in a worldwide economic crisis the likes of which most of us have never seen. Institutions created to ensure against panics are daily being exposed as ineffective. We don't know if new institutions can succeed in restoring if not order, then at least some confidence.

If ever there was a time for information, this is it. Not snippets, but tons of hard news, from all around the world. Fact-based analysis, not just opinion. The premier newsgathering organizations in this country have already been working this story overtime for weeks now. They've only just begun.

Sadly, some others are out of the game because of staff and sectional cutbacks. The shortsightedness of offering readers or viewers less comes back to haunt when news consumers need the information more than ever.

Journalists have been lamenting their lot for years now on angst-driven sites such as Romenesko. Yet what I see these days in The Washington Post newsroom, and in the other papers I read either in print or online, is not angst, but an energy and professionalism that would make the press barons and legendary editors of old proud.

On the blogs I check, however, it's still pretty much America's bar quarrel gone electronic. The subject is largely the presidential campaign, the opinions predictable, hyperpartisanship run amok.

It was fun once, if just to get a gauge on the "real" world "out there." Today it feels spent. Something is happening, and we're going to have to turn to our best and most professional news sources if we want to find out.

Must Reading

Take a look at David Ignatius on the upside of bankruptcy. Robert J. Samuelson asking "Is it 1929 again?" Alvaro Vargas Llosa on "Whose fault was it?" E.J. Dionne Jr. on the campaign and its eerie comparisons already to 1932.

And then go to Vanity Fair online and read Christopher Hitchens on "America the Banana Republic."

James Hill is managing editor of The Washington Post Writers Group.

Comics 101: Reading Between the Lines

What's funny about comics is not just the punchline -- the strip on its simplest level. Test your subtext-reading skill:

Q: What's the funniest word in this Candorville strip?

A: "Nodung" River. Translated, the "No-shit" River. It's a deft allusion to the Straight Talk Express.

Q: What is the best part of the homage in this Little Dog Lost strip, in which the Vulture tries impressing culture upon the Crow?

A: Check out the name of the diner.

Q: Why is this strip from Sept. 14 so cool?

A: The strip coincided with the Harvest Moon, when the moon often looks bigger and brighter than it does the rest of the year.

Q: What is the adroit word choice Brian Crane made in this Pickles strip?

A: Opal could have said "time just FLIES by." But "whizzes" is a much funnier-sounding word. It conjures "wizened" too, making it the perfect word choice.

Q: Which is the most important color in this Watch Your Head strip by Cory Thomas?

A: The orange – as in a "jail-orange jumpsuit" – of the guy's shirt. It's a subtle clue that he's not on the up-and-up, before we even get to the part about him being a philanderer.

Q: What phrase is deceiving in this Opus strip?

A: "City Slicker Bow Hunt." When you read it, you think it's describing a bow hunt organized for city slickers. When you see the illustration, you realize it's describing Wasillans using bows and arrows to hunt city slickers.

Q: Why is the construction in this Home and Away strip by Steve Sicula interesting?

A: We never see Billy. Or his mom. Or the stain stick. All the action on the football field is left to the reader's imagination.

Q: How does Tony Murphy improve the storytelling through his art choices in this It's All About You strip?

A: The monochromatic and silhouette panels provide clues to reading the dialogue. Blue and red (which together make purple) are cartoon colors of an angry face (panel 3). The silhouette (panel 5) pushes the characters back, a clue that what's said in this panel is something easily understood – clear even in the dark – but which will set up something inscrutable. It also breaks up the monotony of the talking heads . And the "beat" panel (6) in blue is the calm before the storm.

Q: What is the biggest "nostalgia" clue – indicating the strip is set in the past – in this Red and Rover strip by Brian Basset?

A: No, it's not the antennas on their space helmets. It's the pink toilet.

Q: How does Cory Thomas imply that Quincy is not telling the truth in this strip?

A: Quincy's face is cut off in the second panel, when he's saying he's "totally focused" on his future.

The Fine Print:
The answers to these questions are solely the opinion of the author. If you disagree, it's a free country. So far. No cartoonists were harmed (or consulted) during the making of this quiz.

Amy Lago is comics editor of The Washington Post Writers Group.

Bailouts and Beyond

In a 24/7 world, newspaper opinion editors can be forgiven for wanting a commentary article "yesterday." The past couple of weeks, with news growing stale almost as fast as it broke, are a good case in point.

I still think that in putting out a quality op-ed page, the operative instruction should be: not so fast. Readers turn to opinion pages for a range of carefully thought-out views and analysis. Thinking on your feet might make for entertaining candidate debates, but a quickly written commentary too often comes off as empty-headed.

Yet as markets headed south and Congress dithered over the Bush administration's $700 billion rescue package -- finally passed Friday, five days after House rejection sent the Dow Jones Industrial Average down 778 points -- it became imperative to get information to readers with as much speed as possible. The news cries out: Pay attention. This is very important.

Opinion writers also have a responsibility to assess the information, offer perspective, and deliver a thesis that readers can use to arrive at their own verdicts. Thus George F. Will and Michael Gerson, two of the country's most respected conservative thinkers, could have columns running side-by-side in The Washington Post taking diametric positions -- Will defending the House's original rejection of the package, Gerson deploring "the revolt of ideology against authority, even against reality."

A day later, David Ignatius' column asked, as it was headlined, "Who Needs Congress?" And then he proceeded to lay out the case that there were other avenues open. "Imagining financial life without the $700 billion rescue is a useful exercise because it helps clarify the baseline issues in this crisis," Ignatius wrote.

As it was, the Senate passed its version of the bailout late the night before. This didn't make Ignatius' column a dead letter, but it did highlight the speed in which events were moving. There would be another day before the House finally sent the package to the president, and the Ignatius column provided fuel to those seeking an alternative.

On the political side, events were also moving at warp speed. Republican presidential candidate John McCain had suspended his campaign the week before and returned to Washington to focus on the bailout negotiations. Then he showed up for the first presidential debate after saying he would not go unless the crisis had been resolved. But analysts -- from both the left and the right -- thought it a disastrous move. Consider Charles Krauthammer's words: "(McCain) tempted fate one time too many. After climbing up on his high horse, McCain had to climb down. The crisis unresolved, he showed up at the debate regardless, rather abjectly conceding (Barack) Obama's mocking retort that presidential candidates should be able to do 'more than one thing at once.' (Although McCain might have pointed out that while he was trying to do two things, Obama was sitting on the sidelines doing one thing only: campaigning.)"

Now consider Krauthammer's conclusion: "Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. famously said of Franklin Roosevelt that he had a 'second-class intellect, but a first-class temperament.' Obama has shown that he is a man of limited experience, questionable convictions, deeply troubling associations (Jeremiah Wright, William Ayers, Tony Rezko) and an alarming lack of self-definition -- do you really know who he is and what he believes? Nonetheless, he's got both a first-class intellect and a first-class temperament. That will likely be enough to make him president."

Wow. That gets your attention. Which is what a powerful piece of writing is supposed to do. I could give more examples, many more in fact, but the point I want to make is this: We work with our writers to stay on top of the news, but also to advance the news and give the reader the tools to make informed decisions. We could, I suppose, grant those wishes for something to be delivered "yesterday." But it would be yesterday's news, and that's not good enough.

James Hill is managing editor of The Washington Post Writers Group.

Not-So-Positively Palin

A rule of thumb during political campaigns is that commentators who hew to an ideological philosophy advance the case for political candidates of like persuasion. But then, rules are made to be broken, aren't they?

Which makes political commentary so fascinating. If politics really does make strange bedfellows, someone still needs to sound a wakeup call. Enter Kathleen Parker and George F. Will, ringing the bells concerning two of the most improbable political strange bedfellows to occupy an American presidential ticket -- Sen. John McCain and Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin.

In the storm surge that was Hurricane Sarah following her (pick a word) surprising, shocking, gutsy, bold, dramatic, irresponsible, desperate, appalling selection as McCain's choice for a running mate, Parker was one of the first to rush to the first-term governor's defense.

In a column written from the Republican convention in St. Paul, Minn., Parker wrote: "Should Palin and McCain prevail come November, feminism can curtsy and treat herself to a hard-earned vacation. The greatest achievement of feminism won't be that a woman reached the vice presidency, but that a woman no longer needed feminists to get there."

But that was then, and now is now. The country is in the midst of (pick your phrase) the greatest financial meltdown since the end of World War II, the greatest since the Great Depression, or heck, let's go the whole nine yards and call it the greatest since the Panic of 1890. America is fighting two wars, and North Korea is kick-starting its nuclear weapons program. Russia has already taken aim at tiny Georgia, and might have its eyes on other countries in the former Soviet Union's near abroad.

The issue is no longer whether Sarah Palin is the right type of woman to be the first on a Republican presidential ticket. Rather, it's pretty clearly thus: Does Palin have what it takes to assume, if need be, the presidency of the United States?

Parker's verdict: No.

"As we've seen and heard more from John McCain's running mate, it is increasingly clear that Palin is a problem," Parker wrote in her fifth column devoted to the Palin candidacy. "Quick study or not, she doesn't know enough about economics and foreign policy to make Americans comfortable with a President Palin should conditions warrant her promotion."

Since the column was released for publication the day following the breakdown of negotiations on the federal government's financial bailout plan, I think it will take some time for Parker's thoughts to sink in. But as they do, consider again what a conservative-leaning columnist is telling a conservative-leaning candidate:

"McCain can't repudiate his choice for running mate. He not only risks the wrath of the GOP's unforgiving base, but he invites others to second-guess his executive decision-making ability. Barack Obama faces the same problem with (Joe) Biden.

"Only Palin can save McCain, her party and the country she loves. She can bow out for personal reasons, perhaps because she wants to spend more time with her newborn. No one would criticize a mother who puts her family first.

"Do it for your country."

George Will's disagreements with one of John McCain's signature reform efforts -- the McCain-Feingold campaign finance act -- have become the stuff of legend, so no one would have been surprised if the country's most widely published conservative columnist didn't have a bone to pick with the McCain candidacy.

Will found that bone in McCain's reaction as the financial meltdown was getting under way.

"For McCain, politics is always operatic, pitting people who agree with him against those who are 'corrupt' or 'betray the public's trust,' two categories that seem to be exhaustive -- there are no other people," Will wrote. "McCain's Manichaean worldview drove him to his signature legislative achievement, the McCain-Feingold law's restrictions on campaigning. Today, his campaign is creatively finding interstices in laws intended to restrict campaign giving and spending."

Read on:

"Conservatives who insist that electing McCain is crucial usually start, and increasingly end, by saying he would make excellent judicial selections. But the more one sees of his impulsive, intensely personal reactions to people and events, the less confidence one has that he would select judges by calm reflection and clear principles, having neither patience nor aptitude for either.

"It is arguable that, because of his inexperience, Obama is not ready for the presidency. It is arguable that McCain, because of his boiling moralism and bottomless reservoir of certitudes, is not suited to the presidency. Unreadiness can be corrected, although perhaps at great cost, by experience. Can a dismaying temperament be fixed?"

Having read that last paragraph, a reader from Washington state dispatched a letter to the editor of The Washington Post, inquiring: "I read the last paragraph again and again, and still I wondered whether I had gotten it right. Did George Will really just endorse Sen. Barack Obama for president?"

Far from me to say. But I think, to take Will's and Parker's columns as examples, that commentary and analysis are always more interesting when a writer goes against the grain instead of following a rule of thumb.

Quick Picks

Can't get enough of political commentary? Neither can I. So go to washingtonpost.com and bookmark PostPartisan, a blog billed as "Quick takes by The Post's opinion writers."

Writers Group columnists such as Charles Krauthammer, E.J. Dionne Jr., Michael Gerson, Ruth Marcus, Eugene Robinson and Kathleen Parker are among those contributing. It's a lively site.

Another new feature on washingtonpost.com that's worthy of a bookmark is Political Browser, a grab-bag of items looking at "what's good on the Web." Lots of links, video, interactivity. The Browser joins The Trail and The Fix as go-to places to find out first what's going on on the political calendar.

James Hill is managing editor of The Washington Post Writers Group.

Give and Take

Jim: We're going to try something new with Groupblog this week -- two for the price of one. Not a face-off, but just a short discussion of the issues surrounding journalism and The Writers Group's approach to the questions our industry is dealing with in these changing times.

Most of these conversations will be between editorial director Alan Shearer and myself, but we'll occasionally bring other colleagues in as well. One of us will do the introduction. Then a response. And then a response to the response. We'll try to keep it lively, civil, and fun.

What I've been thinking about as we launch this give and take are readers, specifically newspaper readers. When I was an assistant metropolitan editor at the Los Angeles Times, our metro editor had a pretty much standard reply when he thought a project we had been working on still wasn't ready for prime time: "Pity the poor reader."

Aside from immediately dismissing dreams of Pulitzer Prize glory, it was his way of saying that although his assistants might think we had nailed the story down, what we wanted to put in the paper would still come across as pretty much incomprehensible to the average reader.

The Times was a great newspaper then (still is) and I daresay not much ever got in that was incomprehensible, but when you got that caustic comment, editors immediately knew it was back to the drawing board. And with such coaching, great journalism is made.

Now newspaper journalism is in a great upheaval as media companies struggle to deal with the inevitable -- the transition from print to electronic delivery. I'm betting we'll make that transition, actually, I think we're already making it, but in the many discussions going on in newsrooms and on journalism chat sites, I wonder if we haven't lost sight of our true objective: our readers.

Alan has been wrestling a lot with this issue too, so over to you.

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Alan: Jim, your story is from a time long gone. When you and I were starting, reporters and editors decided what people would read. In those days, people felt they had to read their daily paper from cover to cover in order to be good citizens. We were the ones sifting news from all sources and presenting as complete a package as the paper would hold.

Today "pity the poor reader" has a different meaning. As we watch newspapers dissolve, the reader is offered less, sometimes much less. And they're leaving in big numbers, undoubtedly for that very reason. It's no longer worth it.

Almost every day, we hear of a newspaper going all or mostly local, as if what is needed are weeklies published daily. And almost every day we hear of steeper readership declines.

People are interested in news of their nation and the world. There's a reason why they send their kids AWAY to college. Yet so many newspapers have convinced themselves into serving a menu harvested from no greater distance than the backyard. It's a vicious cycle that may end badly for many publications if they don't rethink and utilize all the resources at hand to present as complete a package as possible, and on as many platforms as necessary.

One of the more famous "insider" quotes in our business came from Polk Laffoon, a PR person with the old Knight Ridder chain. It was quoted again in 2002 by Tim McGuire in his speech as outgoing president of the American Society of Newspaper Editors:

"He (Laffoon) said this about newsroom staff cuts to Rick Edmonds from Poynter: "How deep is too deep? I suppose it's when you can't get the paper out. An awful lot of papers that get very thin still sell just fine."

Well, Polk, they don't "sell just fine" anymore, do they?

-----

Jim: We've all heard the reader's lament about a paper thin on substance: "Nothing to read." It's about the cruelest indictment you can hand down, and yet it seems our industry has ignored it too long at its peril.

Truth is, readers have more options today than ever in easy, instant access to the news. Ten years ago I had to drive to a bookstore to purchase a week-old copy of The Sunday Times of London. This morning I read several stories from the daily Times of London by going on the Web.

But I think that's the point largely missing in the debate so many editors and publishers are engaging in: you can't work your way out of your dilemma by eliminating content. Thin papers will not "sell just fine" -- not in print versions, certainly not online.

I like a local story as much as anyone. Some of my favorite things in The Post are the crime and mayhem stories found in the Metro section -- great reporting, great reading. But I also want to know about those parts of the world where people are capable of causing much more mayhem than a drive-by shooting in one of the seedier parts of the District of Columbia.

That also takes great reporting. To think that your readers wouldn't notice if you were to abandon such coverage is to sell them short. And yes, Alan, that's the real pity.

James Hill is managing editor of The Washington Post Writers Group; Alan Shearer is The Writer's Group's editorial director.

The Great Communicator

I have written about the American Sports/Shout culture and given reasons why news organizations should rise above it. If we stoop to this culture, we erode what has always made us necessary to people's lives.

Shouting opinions, or publishing snippets of opinion, neither informs nor persuades. After a while, it doesn't even entertain -- if it ever did.

This summer, I have had the joy of rediscovering Abraham Lincoln's writings and speeches. Over the years, I have consulted them occasionally to verify a quote or just to marvel at greatest communicator of his time.

Lincoln painstakingly prepared his speeches. He researched history and worked for days. According to Doris Kearns Goodwin's fine history "Team of Rivals," Lincoln's law partner once observed that Lincoln would express no opinion until he knew his subject "inside and outside, upside and downside." He needed facts to support his argument

Lincoln's first speech to a truly large audience -- by torchlight on Oct. 16, 1854, at the Illinois State Fair in Peoria -- was to argue against the Kansas-Nebraska Act giving the new states the choice over whether to permit slavery. The three-hour speech quickly was regarded as one of the finest of its day. By tracing the clear intent of the Founders to limit the spread of slavery and eradicate it eventually, Lincoln made a powerful, historical argument against extending the practice to new states and territories.

But he did something else. He showed genuine empathy to slaveowners and their supporters. "Unlike the majority of antislavery orators, who denounced the South and castigated slaveowners as corrupt and un-Christian, Lincoln pointedly denied fundamental differences between Northerners and Southerners," Goodwin writes.

"I have no prejudice against the Southern people," Lincoln said in his speech. "They are just what we would be in their situation. If slavery did not now exist amongst them, they would not introduce it. If it did now exist amongst us, we should not instantly give it up."

This was a different approach to an emotionally charged topic. For Lincoln believed that "in order to `win a man to your cause,' you must first reach his heart, 'the great high road to his reason,'" Goodwin wrote.

This speech launched Lincoln's political career as an anti-slavery advocate. Throughout his life, he always sought to understand, and empathize with, his adversaries. It would serve him well.

And it would serve all of us in the news business to remember this lesson. Our readers will stick with us if we give them substance, and most important, if we empathize with them.

A Washington Post reader told me the other day that he e-mailed a Post reporter with a question about a story. Within a day, the reporter sent back a cordial response with the answer to why a certain fact had been omitted. I know how surly and stressed reporters can get. I was one for nearly a decade and I had a few moments with pesky callers. But ask yourselves whether your reporters would be as welcoming as the Post reporter was to this reader.

And I often wonder, in all the newsroom discussions about cutting this or that, redesigning the redesign, etc., whether anyone speaks on behalf of readers. Editor & Publisher magazine recently put this into words. In an editorial called "Downsizing Readers," the magazine notes that in the recent wave of restructuring and reinvention by newspapers, "it's increasingly apparent that readers are an afterthought at best."

Take some lessons from the Great Communicator of the 19th century. Get the facts right, provide thorough information and depth, and empathize with your readers. And stay far, far above the Sports/Shout culture.

Alan Shearer is editorial director of The Washington Post Writers Group.

Is the Enemy Us?

So, how did we come to this stage, where advertising is no longer supporting the level of newsgathering we've been used to? Was it something we did? In the wisdom of Pogo, is the enemy us? Since this isn't a talk show, the answers - if there are any -- are complicated.

The first entry of a blog by Bill Lobdell, a journalist who recently left the Los Angeles Times, is worth reading. He lists numerous reasons for the business decline. One leaps out: "We operated as though we had a monopoly on truth and great journalism for far too long. We didn't listen to our critics and sometimes our readers. That cost us."

If you have interviewed recent college graduates, or engaged young people in serious conversation about the news, you may have been struck by one thing in particular: a belief in equality, that everyone's opinions -- and news judgments -- have equal merit.

If you think about it, this is the emotion propelling Facebook, YouTube and similar sites. It's also one of the reasons people come to our journalism "sideways," by linking based on topic, not entering through the home page as a print reader does with Page 1.

No question that the vaporizing of recruitment and real estate classifieds in many markets the last few months requires unprecedented belt-tightening. We are in many ways at the mercy of the national economy. Many of our cherished colleagues must leave their jobs, and we feel for them and wonder if it could happen to us. In this changed environment, we have no choice but to pare our operations so they become as lean as possible, and adapt to the new reality by developing multiple platforms. And these new platforms must contain the highest quality journalism to keep people interested.

Howard Weaver, vice president of news for The McClatchy Co., had a noteworthy blog post for his editors recently. Here's how it opens:

"We're working hard across McClatchy to discover and embrace new relationships with our audiences, moving from the old gatekeeper paradigm to a new model of conversation, sharing and co-creation. It's a huge shift for us, coming right in the midst of wrenching economic dislocation, but so what? The payoffs are enormous: survival, and, more importantly, better tools for democracy."

All of us need to experiment with Howard's new model of conversation, sharing and co-creation. Lots of times this starts with a big reader draw, be it a sporting event, big-name writer or celebrity. The example Weaver uses is the Web site for R.E.M.'s concert tour.

Some attempts will fail, some might succeed. But we should not be afraid to try. That's what Americans always have done, as Alexis de Tocqueville observed. From the days of the early settlements, we've taken all sorts of risks, suffered setbacks, and kept going.

I recently found this passage from Tocqueville from Chapter 17 of "Democracy in America." He's talking about what happens when religious faith diminishes as Americans strive to succeed. Read it in the context of today's changing newspaper business.

"When everyone is constantly striving to change his position, when an immense field for competition is thrown open to all, when wealth is amassed or dissipated in the shortest possible space of time amid the turmoil of democracy, visions of sudden and easy fortunes, of great possessions easily won and lost, of chance under all its forms haunt the mind. The instability of society itself fosters the natural instability of man's desires. In the midst of these perpetual fluctuations of his lot, the present looms large upon his mind; it hides the future, which becomes indistinct, and men seek only to think about tomorrow."

That's our brave new world. In some ways, it's like the old. And the best journalism has a place in it.

Alan Shearer is editorial director of The Washington Post Writers Group.