Last Wednesday evening, I watched the status updates tick through my Facebook feed. I was on my 30-minute dinner break at my part-time bookseller job, away from television and radio. I posted a status update asking friends to keep their own updates coming, that I knew we – in this instance, the Kansas City Royals – were close.

After my shift ended, I checked my phone once again, and I chuckled at The New York Times news alert that confirmed what I had already known for three hours. Headline: “Royals Keep Rolling, and Advance to the World Series.” The first paragraph read even more humorous: “After going 29 years without playing a single postseason game, the Kansas City Royals are making up for a lot of wasted time.”

And during that long stretch of nothing between 1985 and 2014, there was one common thread to the experience of watching the Royals cause intermittent euphoria: Newspapers.

My parents attended Game 6 in Kansas City on Oct. 26, 1985, a little less than two months before I was born. There’s a photograph of me in 1986 wearing a Royals outfit at 4 months old. But I didn’t really get introduced to the magnitude of the Royals’ eventual series win until I found a cardboard box in the basement.

My father had collected stadium plastic cups, ticket stubs, programs, and at least two World Series shirts. The box also holds lots and lots of newspapers.

I had called my dad that Wednesday afternoon to see if he wanted me to get him a copy of The Kansas City Star in the morning. My full-time job starts at 3:30 a.m. each day, and I knew that I would need to hit the rounds of gas stations at my soonest possible morning break if I were to get one. (One of my Facebook friends, aged 30, posted a Facebook photo at 7:50 a.m. Thursday of his stack of copies, proudly proclaiming that he had cleaned out the nearest 7-Eleven and was looking forward to one day passing along the copies to his future children and grandchildren.)

No need: Dad’s been buying them at the gas station throughout the last month’s ride, not just Thursday’s “World Class” issue.

"World class." Your @KCStar front page on the #Royals reaching the World Series. pic.twitter.com/3Mx2VWZrpG

— Charles Gooch (@drgooch41) October 16, 2014

Last Thursday I asked him why he still buys the papers.

He likes the articles about the different players, the in-depth profiles, not just of the Royals but also for the San Francisco Giants.

I ask when he thinks we stopped subscribing to the Star at our house, two hours west of Kansas City in Wamego, Kansas. He doesn’t remember taking it in the first place when I was growing up. I laugh and tell him that of course we did. I read “FYI,” the features section, from start to finish daily (and, if I skipped a day, I remember going back and getting caught up on my horoscopes, national music news and celebrity birthdays).

My mind also turns to my late grandfather at this time. John DeWeese adored newspapers. He took both The Star and the Kansas City Times, which ceased publication in 1990. My grandmother’s kitchen table still bears the imprint of newspaper ink from where Pops read his papers every day.

He’s been gone almost 15 years now. I wonder, what would Pops think of the Royals making it to the World Series? Would he share an interest in the Internet like my grandmother? More so, would he be sure to get a copy of each morning’s newspaper, even if the Royals were — as usual — having a mediocre season?

I know for sure the answer to the last question. In 2008, one month after I graduated from Kansas State University with a degree in journalism, I pulled myself away from job applications and wandered into my grandmother’s basement, to my grandfather’s desk, which remains the same since his death in April 2000. There, his fill-in-the-blank desk calendar from 1997 is still sitting. Many of the dates’ questions remained blank, but I happened upon one date that asked, if he could go into any profession he wanted, what it would be.

Journalism, he wrote in his near-perfect cursive.

My mind jumps back to a block away, to my own childhood home, and the basement. I ask my father what editions are in the box – just World Series games, or all of the coverage leading up to the seven games?

He’s not sure. The box might not even exist anymore, he says, laughing – it might have gotten thrown away.

“Nah,” I say, with a laugh back. It has to be there. Nearby, in a similar box, there is a box filled with newspaper clippings and magazine issues paying tribute to Princess Diana, who died when I was in the sixth grade. Those are my mom’s.

Greater Kansas City is now my home, and I’ve lived and worked on both sides of the state line. The former daily newspaper reporter in me is elated, to know that stands are selling out, that fans of all ages have rushed out to purchase their commemorative copies. I don’t want to be skeptical. I want to be in the here, in the now, celebrating the success of not only our baseball team but also the sales and general interest in the newspaper. I want this part of 1985 to stay with us permanently.

It’s been 18 months since I’ve held the title of daily newspaper reporter, but my mind is weighed down with questions: How long will the sales momentum last? Is too much of a good thing ever bad? If it takes us another 29 years to make it to postseason play, will we still be able to purchase our tangible ink copies of celebration in the future?

My five years of professional work experience in print journalism taught me patience, to take each deadline, each issue, each day as it comes, with grace and virtue and the hopes of getting to do it all over again in the next 24 hours. That is how I choose to answer my questions right now. What I do know – for now, at least – is that once the World Series is finished, I won’t go back and read through the Facebook status updates or the New York Times news alert that I forwarded to my family.

I’ll go treasure hunting for that nearly 30-year-old cardboard box. Should it still exist, I’ll gingerly lift out the newspapers and hold the history in my hands. If they’re still around, part of me wants to properly archive them in acid-free folders as an early Christmas present to my father. Really, though, the box will remain where it is, perhaps gaining a new neighbor with the stories of 2014. Read more

Without being at the scene of the arrests it is difficult to say if anyone did anything illegal last night when two reporters were detained at a McDonald’s in Ferguson, Missouri. The reporters were covering the protests and riots that broke out after an 18-year-old black man named Michael Brown was fatally shot by police there.

The tension here lies with allowing the police to do what they need to do to protect public safety and conduct a complete investigation and balancing that with journalists’ right to report.

The police can regulate the time, place and manner of speech to a certain degree as long as it is not a content-based regulation. Meaning, they can clear an area of everyone if they think they need to do that to keep the peace, but they can’t single out a journalist and tell him he cannot be there.

The First Amendment provides safeguards that allow people to gather and disseminate information about government officials. A question to consider in this instance is: Why did the police arrest the reporters? Were the police trying to control the scene or to stop the journalists from doing their jobs?

A journalist has the same rights as the general public to access public property. And, generally, it is legal to record video of people where they would reasonably expect to be seen. However, journalists are not granted special rights to disobey police orders, nor are they allowed to interfere with police work.

Journalists have potential recourse if they believe they are unlawfully arrested. If journalists can prove that they were specifically detained because they were covering news, not just because they were suspected of breaking the law, they can potentially bring a civil claim against a police officer for unlawfully interfering with news gathering.

When journalists are covering demonstrations or public events, they should at all times carry a press credential and government-issued identification (like a driver’s license or a passport) to make it visible that they are members of the media. Also, they should carry money or a credit card to post bond, if necessary.

If a journalist is arrested, he should let the officer know that he is a member of the media and let the supervising officer be notified that a reporter is being detained. The arrested journalist should ask to contact his or her organization’s lawyer.

When reporting in a private property, like a McDonald’s, to minimize risk you should seek consent from the property owner. If you are asked to leave private property, you can explain why you believe you should be able to stay on the property. However, you can be charged with trespassing if you remain on the property and the owner or government officials determine that you do not have a right to be there.

Related: News University Course on Newsgathering Law & Liability: A Guide for Reporting

Related: How journalists can protect themselves & the news they’ve gathered if arrested on the job Read more

There is an underlying fact that makes the Scripps and Journal deal make sense: Broadcasting is still profitable. Second quarter earnings have been strong and topped last year’s numbers.

Wall Street loves broadcasting, and bigger broadcast companies do better than smaller ones these days. Bigger companies have more leverage to negotiate retransmission deals with cable companies. Once this deal is approved, Scripps will be the powerhouse owner of ABC stations, which gives the company leverage to influence the network. Scripps stock hit five-year highs Thursday in response to the news that the company was spinning off its newspapers from the broadcast and online properties.

Wednesday’s  deal is part of a mosaic of mega-media mergers that have produced super-sized broadcast owners that are more than twice the size of what they were only a decade ago. These giant companies include Sinclair, Nexstar, Media General, Gannett, Gray and others all of whom have grown considerably even while newspapers retreat.

All have seen stocks soar to at or around five-year peaks.

Scripps is not new to the spinoff play. In 2008, riding on a wave of popularity with its food and lifestyle cable channels, the company created Scripps Networks Interactive, which includes Food Network, The Travel Channel, HGTV and the Cooking Channel. The new company’s value has been steadily rising since the spinoff.

Last year, Scripps paid $110 million cash for ABC affiliate WKBW in Buffalo and WMYD, a MyNetworkTV affiliate in Detroit, where Scripps owns WXYZ as well. In 2011, Scripps bought up the McGraw-Hill group for $212 million cash.

This year, Scripps made news by adding staff and launching a paywalled broadcast news website at WCPO in Cincinnati. The group said it intended to produce Web-exclusive material that would be worth paying for and if the gamble worked, it would expand the idea to other markets. It has not expanded yet.

Look at this chart Pew Research published in May, which showed how the biggest owners have grown even before the Scripps-Journal deal. (With stations in 27 markets, the Scripps/Journal deal will make that company the fifth-largest holder of television stations in the country.)

And local television still is the main source of local news for Americans.

Local broadcasters also are rising a wave of favorable Supreme Court decisions. Broadcast stocks rocketed after the Supreme Court struck down Aereo’s attempt to pass along local station signals without paying for them, and the court’s Citizens United decision virtually assures the windfall from political ads will continue.

Some of the biggest broadcast players, including Scripps, Sinclair, Gray and Nexstar are heavily invested in states that have the most heated midterm political elections this year. Early forecasts predicted a $2.6 billion spend on midterm races this year, rivaling the $2.9 billion spent in the last presidential election.

Scripps stations also have a history of being deeply involved in community affairs. The Scripps Howard Foundation contributes millions to local causes and educational institutions in markets where it has properties. (Disclosure: The Poynter Institute received $20k in support from SHF in 2013 and 2014 and Poynter hosts the Scripps Howard National Awards judging each year.) Read more

On July 31, 2013, after the layoff calls came, some of the current and now-former staff of The Plain Dealer got together for drinks at Market Garden Brewery in Cleveland. Newsrooms around the country called in and bought drinks for those gathered — $4,933 worth of drinks, Eric Sandy reported the next day for Cleveland Scene.

That day, more than 50 people had been laid off from The Plain Dealer.

“We drank for free all night,” John Horton remembered.

“It was bittersweet because we were together, we were supporting each other but we knew that so many of us, myself included, were not going to be going back to the building ever again,” Ellen Kleinerman said.

Kleinerman and Horton were there. So were Donald Rosenberg and John Mangels. One guy, Harlan Spector remembers, drove up from Pittsburgh just to lend a shoulder if needed. “It’s so touching that somebody would feel compelled to do that,” he said.

“It was strange, I guess it was sort of like a wake in a way, but everybody was very compassionate about everyone else’s situation,” Rosenberg, who covered arts and wine for the paper, said. “The people that survived were very empathetic of the people who were leaving. The people who were leaving were very concerned about what was going to happen next.”

“Our emotions were pretty raw, as you can imagine,” Mangels said. Although he said the night was “a bit of a blur, unfortunately,” he, too, remembers that it “felt like a wake,” but also a graduation. And more notable: “We didn’t talk shop, which was the normal topic when journalists gather. We talked about ourselves and our families, our fears and hopes for the future. I remember talking to one of the graphic artists, a talented guy who was hoping to reinvent himself as a long-haul trucker.”

“I think everyone realized that things were changing,” Horton said. “In a way you’re saying goodbye to a lot of people and the way things were and going into an unknown territory.”

“I think we all were aware that it was the last time we’d be together as newspaper journalists, but that we’d always share that bond,” Mangels said.

One year later, we’ve caught up with some of those journalists who were laid off from The Plain Dealer. We couldn’t get every story, and we’d like to hear more: Email tips@poynter.org if you have one to share.

John Horton: ‘I was making a long-term decision’

Being a reporter was John Horton’s dream job. In elementary school, he delivered the paper for three years, lugging the heavy bag with newspapers up and down Cleveland streets. He worked at The Plain Dealer for 14 years. During the last five years, Horton wrote a column called “Road Rant,” writing about people’s complaints about issues including bad roads and potholes. One year ago, Horton took a voluntary buyout.

“I was making a long term decision,” he said.

“I was going to bet on what they were doing, or I was going to bet on my ability to transition into another career.”

A few weeks later, Horton started his current job in media relations at Cuyahoga Community College. Now, he still works with journalists and looks for good stories. Horton didn’t leave with hard feelings, he said.

“I loved every day that I was there.”

After the layoffs, Horton started running with his 13-year-old son. It cleared his head. He still runs nearly every day, has lost 20 pounds in the past year and ran a half-marathon. He truly enjoys what he’s doing now, he said, but “to be honest, there aren’t a lot of of jobs that are cooler than being a reporter. I mean, that’s what Superman was.”

“I miss the daily challenge that you had, the feeling that you were doing something larger that made a big difference, fighting that fight every day,” Horton said. “I think journalism is one of the few jobs that really has that aspect to it.”

He doesn’t miss the situation at The Plain Dealer or the stress, though. No job comes with guarantees, but for him, the day-to-day worries about what was coming next were too much.

“Leaving that was a relief.”

Ellen Kleinerman: ‘It was a calling’

Ellen Kleinerman didn’t realize how stressful the months leading up to the layoffs were until it was all over. Kleinerman, who worked for The Plain Dealer for 14 years, did not volunteer for the layoffs.

“I was just an emotional mess,” she said. “It wasn’t just a job for me. It was a career. It was a calling. It was something that I would get up every day and feel like, this is what I want to do. It just was more than a job.”

Kleinerman, who covered medical issues when the layoffs happened, did a lot of networking after she recovered from the news. She freelanced. Then, in February, she drove for an hour through a snowstorm to get to calling hours for a friend’s mother. The whole time she thought, “I’m really crazy to do this. I should just turn around. She’ll understand if I don’t attend. But it’s the right thing to do.”

There, Kleinerman bumped into another colleague who was starting a new job at a chain of weekly newspapers. That chain was looking for a new editor.

One month after applying, Kleinerman went in for an interview.

“So now I’m in newspapers again,” she said. “It’s different, but it’s exciting.”

Kleinerman is the editor of the Chagrin Valley Times, the Solon Times and the Geauga Courier.

Kleinerman has seen a lot of change in 30 years as a reporter and editor. She still reads The Plain Dealer, and she misses it. But she doesn’t miss the stress.

“I guess there’s life after The Plain Dealer,” she said. “And it can be an OK life.”

Bob Fortuna: ‘I don’t miss it. How sad is that?’

About five months after high school sports reporter Bob Fortuna left The Plain Dealer, he was selected for the Ohio Prep Sportswriters Association Hall of Fame alongside his former colleague, Tim Rogers.

A story about the honor ran at Cleveland.com, but no reporter at the newspaper reached out to him for it. Still, said Fortuna, who covered high schools for 36 years and worked at The Plain Dealer since 1990, “It was a nice way to finish.”

Now, Fortuna’s a one-man interior painting and landscaping business. A realtor friend has set him up with clients, and he’s getting work from former Plain Dealer colleagues, too.

“Since I was at The Plain Dealer, I haven’t seen the chiropractor once,” he said. “I used to go once a month.” His headaches are gone, and he dropped 25 pounds. “Mentally and physically, this is the best I’ve felt in 15 years.”

Since volunteering to leave, Fortuna has turned 60 and celebrated 30 years of marriage with his wife. “There is life after The Plain Dealer, believe it or not,” he said. “And that life ain’t too bad, either.”

Fortuna misses the athletes and the coaches from his beat, but says he doesn’t miss dealing with parents and the media frenzy around National Signing Day.

And when it comes to painting, Fortuna immediately knew that was the path forward after ending his career at a job that was increasingly demanding. He always enjoyed painting — “I just never had the time to do it,” he said. “With the social media thing, they want you 24/7. You don’t have a life.” His wife “saw what it was doing to me. She said, ‘you gotta get outta there.’” So he volunteered to go.

“People ask me if I miss it, and I don’t miss it,” he said. “How sad is that?”

John Mangels: ‘I think we had some success’

“I’m still kind of coming to terms with the fact that I’m not and probably never will be again a newspaper journalist,” John Mangels said. Mangels found a job as a communications manager for the Cleveland Clinic after a couple months of looking.

“I was fairly fortunate,” Mangels said. The time off “was tough psychologically, but I was fortunate to go back,” he said. At the new gig, he oversees production of more than 10 print products.

“I use a lot of the same muscles that I did as a newspaper journalist,” Mangels said.

Mangels volunteered for the layoffs list but said he found the job market to be “grim.”

“For someone who has skills that I thought would be translatable … people weren’t beating a path to my door, let’s just say it that way.” He said he was “really lucky to thread the needle. I found a job in Cleveland,” one he not only likes but that lets him continue to write.

Mangels was a science writer for the newspaper and helped organize a campaign called Save The Plain Dealer, a preemptive strike against any plans to cut staff at The Plain Dealer. The paper’s owner, Advance, had made wrenching changes at many of its other properties as it prepared to become a digitally focused organization.

“We’d known, deep down, from the beginning of the campaign that the odds of preserving the paper as it existed were long, probably impossible,” Mangels said. “But it was important to us to try — to alert the community to what was happening, and to try to mitigate some of the more drastic things Advance was planning. I think we had some success.”

John Luttermoser: Working on projects with meaning

John Luttermoser worked at The Plain Dealer for 21 years as a copy editor. Before that he worked at the St. Petersburg Times. Now he’s “working part-time as business administrator for the Presbytery of the Western Reserve, a regional group of Presbyterian Church (USA) congregations in the Cleveland area,” he writes in an email. “I’m also doing some free-lance editing and I’ve continued my volunteer work as secretary of the board for the Dougbe River Presbyterian School, which opened in 2012 in a remote region of eastern Liberia that didn’t previously have a school.”

Peggy Turbett: ‘Photography has never been more important’

Peggy Turbett worked for 13 years as a staff photographer at The Plain Dealer. Her first plan, after learning she’d been laid off, was to work as a reading tutor at an elementary school once a week, “to decompress, I guess, and then figure out the rest as it came along,” she said in an email.

That tutoring gig turned into an after-school camera club that met twice a week for four months. During the time, she said, she got a call asking if she’d teach photojournalism at John Carroll University. A colleague from The Plain Dealer who also taught there suggested Turbett.

“That kind of networking has been crucial,” she said. “If someone asked me to lunch or dinner, I went. Invited to join a local professional women’s group – I did. I also filled out my camera gear with an additional camera body and long lens to handle professional freelance assignments. In the past year I’ve photographed weddings, anniversaries, holiday portraits, high school sports programs, and magazine stories.”

Now, she has several photo projects and continues teaching as an adjunct. Turbett misses the salary and benefits, but not the schedule.

“The interesting dichotomy is that photography has never been more important – visuals are needed in every industry and social media outlet,” Turbett said. “But the prospect for veteran photojournalists to find jobs at daily newspapers is grim to none, from what I’ve seen. The New York Daily News just laid off David Handschuh, with three decades of experience, a former president of NPPA, and who was gravely injured while covering the 9/11 World Trade Center attack for the paper. I mean, really, how can any staff photojournalist feel safe?”

Scott Shaw: Business is booming

Scott Shaw worked at The Plain Dealer for 23 years. He writes in an email: “I’ve been very busy working on my wedding and portrait photography business. I started about five years ago on the side in anticipation of the industry issues. I volunteered to be laid off and it has been a fun challenge! I plan on doing more commercial and photojournalism work in the future but right now I don’t have spare time for that.”

Margaret Bernstein: Making a living ‘while doing good’

Margaret Bernstein was a few weeks away from her 24th anniversary with the Plain Dealer when she took the voluntary buyout. Bernstein wrote a column twice a week that was “solution-oriented,” she said in an email, informing people how they could make a difference in the city, “particularly with helping people get out of poverty.”

Her job led to research on issues such as literacy and parent mentoring, and Bernstein thought with all she knew, she could make a living while “doing good.”

“I am now a self-employed consultant, and my ‘call to action’ style has become my brand,” Bernstein said. “I helped design and am currently promoting a ‘Top 10 Ways You Can Improve Literacy In Greater Cleveland’ campaign for a local organization, The Literacy Cooperative. I’m also facilitating the spread of the Little Free Library ‘movement’ in Cleveland.” She’s also working to finish a book she has spent 12 years working on about Cleveland activist Yvonne Pointer. Read more

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For an industry built on a foundation of truth-telling, the newspaper business sure has trouble telling the truth about itself.

Last month at the World Newspaper Congress in Turin, Italy, the chief spokesperson for U.S.-based dailies, Newspaper Association of America President Caroline Little, gave publishers, editors and educators from around the world a presentation on “the current state of newspaper media in the United States.”

Little’s PowerPoint show was a work of art. With her palette of selective statistics, context-less trend statements and stock photos of smiling, young news consumers, she painted an uplifting masterpiece worthy of the Italian master Botticelli. His cherubic angels were Little’s news-hungry Millennials; his dancing nymphs were her nimble publishers.

If I hadn’t known better – knowledge gained through years as the editor of The Seattle Times and in my current role as the president of the American Society of News Editors – I’d have thought U.S. papers were thriving. I might have walked out of the auditorium, Skyped my financial advisor and said, “Forget waiting on that Uber IPO; put my money in Lee Newspapers stock.”

Luckily for my family and my financial future, I know spin when I see it. The NAA and the companies it represents are spinning far too often these days.

Here’s what Little and her PowerPoint said – and what she didn’t say:

What she said: “Total revenue for the multiplatform U.S. newspaper media business amounted to $37.59 billion in 2013.” What she didn’t say: It was a billion dollars more than that in 2012, $2 billion more in 2011, and $12 billion more in 2006. In other words, it’s dropped by a third in seven years and continues to fall with no end in sight.

What she said: “The printed newspaper continues to reach more than half of the U.S. adult population.” What she didn’t say: But the percentage of Americans who routinely read a printed paper daily continues its dramatic decline, and is somewhere down around 25 percent.  “Reaching” in Little’s reference can mean those people read one issue in the past week; it doesn’t mean they are regular daily readers of the printed paper.

What she said: “This is not an audience that will be abandoning newspapers anytime soon.” What she didn’t say: But they may soon be reading pass-around copies in the nursing home. I recently learned from internal sources that for one major newspaper, the average age of its daily readers moved from 55 to 60 in just 18 months. What will it be by 2020?

To her credit, Little did address the need for newspapers to find new sources of revenue, especially digital. She pointed out, correctly, that newspaper content is drawing significant readership online. But she portrayed a fiction where papers could invent a new future while holding on tightly to the past.

I was once a member of this flat-earth society. Briefly, I believed, like Orange County Register owner Aaron Kushner, that if we restored the papers to their pre-recession levels of quality and size, subscribers would come back. I no longer believe that (and neither, based on the massive layoffs at Kushner’s paper, does he).

There is no doubt that newspapers accelerated this decline with the astounding, quarterly-returns-driven decimation of their products over the past decade. But to pretend that the profound shift from fiber to cyber is anything short of a revolution in news consumption is a disservice to journalism and to the democracy that depends upon it.

We don’t need access to newspaper circulation and revenue figures, spun or otherwise, to see the reality. Get on a commuter train, go to a coffee shop, go to an airport, go to any of the places where people used to devour printed newspapers, and see how few are doing that now.

Let’s get real. The seven-day-a-week printed newspaper – particularly in metropolitan areas – is terminally ill. Working to sustain it is not only futile, but ultimately destructive to the very values its champions espouse.

In a recent post titled, “Nostalgia and Newspapers,” New York University professor Clay Shirky, nemesis of the NAA, wrote, “We don’t have much time left to manage the transition away from print.” I agree – to a point.

Yes, on a Tuesday morning at Starbucks, laptops and tablets outnumber newspapers, dozens to one. But go on a Sunday morning, and you’ll see latte-sippers of all ages perusing that day’s paper, sections spread out over tabletops. For years, newspaper publishers and editors have known through market research that the Sunday paper is a different, more intimate experience for consumers. A good Sunday edition, with a mix of investigative journalism, profiles, cultural reporting, perspective pieces, sports analysis, photography, comics, crosswords and coupons, is an experience many people value and even love. My twentysomething daughters and their friends can’t imagine buying a Tuesday paper, but love the Sunday morning paper-and-pajamas party.

And for most papers, the Sunday edition already accounts for more than half of their total revenue. For some, it’s around 60 percent. It’s a proven, effective vehicle for advertisers.

So, I say to publishers: Invest in a superb, in-depth, last-all-week Sunday (or better yet, Saturday) paper, a publication so big and rich and engaging that readers will devour it piece by piece over many days, and pay a good price for that pleasure. Get together with each other and consolidate your printing operations, creating one independent print-and-deliver contractor in each geographic region who can shed the outdated and outsized costs of your legacy operations.

Then turn your attention and your resources where they belong now: Creating meaningful, engaging and sustainable news products for emerging technologies, where most of you are already woefully behind such innovative rivals as Vox and Vice.

Move deliberately to one weekly, “lean back” printed paper and an array of quality, interactive, “lean in” digital products, especially for mobile devices, to which your readers are moving far faster than you are.

(One tidbit Little did reveal in her Italy PowerPoint: Newspaper advertising on mobile platforms, by far the fastest-growing vehicle for news consumption, amounts to less than 1 percent of the industry’s total.)

Use that money you’re spending now on newsprint, ink, pressmen, trucks, drivers and gasoline and hire more reporters, photographers, videographers, data journalists, software developers, mobile designers, social-media experts, workflow architects, marketing strategists and digital advertising pros. Recognize, like the big tech companies do, that the most valuable thing your digital readers can give you is their data, not their dollars.

Turn your attention, now so inwardly focused, outward. Build your community connections, especially with minority groups that will soon become the majority.

Don’t worry about your remaining loyal print readers. Most will readily pay you whatever you ask for that quality weekly, perhaps even what you charge them for the full week now.

Finally, make this transition in a brave, bold, confident – and candid – way. Go seven days to one in a fell swoop, avoiding the confusion Newhouse has created in its cities with four-days-a-week publication.

Pick a date certain – say, January 1, 2018 – and tell your readers and advertisers unapologetically that that’s where you are headed, why you are headed there, and that you want their help in figuring out how to get there in a way that will serve them and the community best.

They – and the 38,000 journalists still working for American newspapers – deserve the truth. They can handle it. Can you?

David Boardman is Dean of the Temple University School of Media and Communication. He is also president of the American Society of News Editors and chairman of the Poynter Institute’s National Advisory Board. His views are his own and he is not speaking for those organizations.

Caroline Little Response: We need to embrace all media including print Read more

“Mr. Seigenthaler is on the phone, “ I was told. It had to be important. Why else would John be calling me in the middle of the day?

After greetings the conversation went something like this:

“John, what can I do for you?”

“Well, Gregory, you know that cologne you wear? Dolores [his beautiful wife] loves it and she wants me to start using it. I was wondering if you could tell me how I can get some.”

He got it, and every time we met afterward, we sniffed each other and laughed, leaving bystanders wondering if we had misplaced our marbles.

Now, John Seigenthaler is gone. And everyone he ever touched, up close or far away, deeply mourns his passing but will never forget what he did in a life that was truly well-lived.

“Choose your heroes and go and do likewise.”

That was the simple, but eloquent, advice given once to a group of journalists by a wise man, the late Gene Patterson, who like John was a powerful voice for the voiceless in the South.

None of us could have chosen a better hero than John to observe and study and attempt to follow his footsteps. The only problem, we knew none of us could come close to duplicating what John accomplished, as a reporter, editor, battler for civil rights, unrelenting protector of the First Amendment, inspiring leader and caring friend.

He was a man of courage and compassion, a man who fit in backstage at the Grand Ole Opry or up front at Carnegie Hall, a man who could captivate an audience with his lyrical prose and always left it with some gems of wisdom to take home, as well as some laughs to remember.

A man to mimic, if only we could be that good.

So long, old friend.

Related: Former Poynter President Karen Dunlap writes that Seigenthaler was “a man who stood for news media freedom, who worked on things that mattered and helped a community bridge its differences.” | The Tennessean’s Seigenthaler package Read more