You may have heard some plate-rattling evangelism coming from the Sheraton

Madison Hotel during the past three days. About 100 journalists and sales associates from Lee Enterprises gathered at the Sheraton Madison Hotel to plot an online future. (Lee owns half of Capital Newspapers, which publishes the Wisconsin State Journal and The Capital Times.) Called Lee Online University, the seminar packed our heads with many new ideas, unusual approaches and shiny new technologies that will keep us busy for the next year!

I'm sure you've noticed that in the past few years the Wisconsin State Journal has incrementally increased our commitment to online publishing. We've done audio slide shows, moving sports infographics, interactive maps on our water wells, blogs, polls, quizzes and TV feeds through a WKOW-TV camera installed right outside my office. We've just scratched the surface. You've responded by boosting the traffic on our web site, madison.com/wsj, by 35 percent in the past year. We know that the print newspaper is still the most popular way to consume daily news in our town. However, the future most certainly will involve online media.

Newspaper editors understand their jobs involve balancing resources between the print product and online. (Two of my favorite blogs on the topic are buzzmachine.com and poynter.org/romenesko.) I toggle from exhilaration to exhaustion on this topic. The past few days clearly have amped my energy for the tasks ahead. The new work looks more like fun than hardship. And there's a novelty about it all that reminds me of how exciting it was when I started out in the news biz about 30 years ago.

The Lee conference gave us specific information from some of our colleagues at Lee's 50-plus newspapers. Faculty at this seminar included John Bolton, the online editor of the Arizona Daily Star; Kurt Greenbaum, online news editor at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch; and Andrew Satter, online producer at the Arizona Daily Star. Joyce Dehli, Lee's vice president for news and former managing editor of the State Journal, was one of the event's organizers. Here are a couple of examples of evocative content that other newspapers are offering online:

http://www.azstarnet.com/secureborder

http://www.nctimes.com/special_reports/road/

About eight of us from the State Journal gleaned many new techniques that include videographing our stories, creating data bases that we can turn into interactive maps and building social networks, which is a term for what you've experienced here as forums, blogs and Post. As dizzying as the new information is, the training foreshadowed a horizon that involves as yet unimagined tools for our journalism.

On a parallel track in another room, our advertising colleagues were learning about new opportunities for our advertisers through innovative ads on the web.

Ten years ago much of the new media (called We Media by some) was a curiousity in traditional newsrooms. Five years ago many editors resisted embracing the internet out of fear that it would kill the print newspaper. This week, I began to look at the new media tools as perhaps not the end of journalism but just may be its savior.

We have renewed emphasis on breaking news. Years ago, one of my first editors used to shout as we ran out to a crime scene: "Get it first. Get it fast. Get it right!" I find myself saying the same to our editors and reporters as we work through the issues of how to put our news on madison.com.

• Do we wait until we publish the newspaper to give news to readers/users? No. We get it first on madison.com.
• Do we spend hours polishing a breaking news story? No. We get it as fast as we can and come back later to embellish.
• Do we go with rumors or unverified blog reports? No. We get it right and that means making sure the information is dead-on and in context.

The topic I have wrestled most with in the past year has been the role of social networking in our newspaper and website. I am exploring it with this blog. I watch the forums on madison.com light up each day with conversation about news, politics, life issues, rants and raves, most of them ignited by newspaper articles. I have long believed that the readers are smarter than we are in the newsroom because they are at the center of every news story. However, I have had questions about whether readers really do want to be "citizen journalists" as some websites call contributors who self-publish online content. See http://madisoncommons.org/, as an example. What if the volunteers don't want to write credible stories at some future time? Will anyone be willing to do this hard work if newspapers die because no one wants to pay for the journalism?

Here's where I am today: I can see an emerging version of social networking that creates conversation and helps news organizations gather information through blogs and email. I can imagine it co-existing with verifiable and credible news in your local newspaper and its website. In fact, journalism and social networking likely will feed each other in the future as self-publishing via the web becomes as commonplace as turning on the television set.

Jeff Herr, director of interactive media for Lee Enterprises, compared the rise of online social networks to the early days of our country when people gathered at taverns and social clubs to vent their opinions and get some fellowship. He said that this new way of sharing information online is particularly helpful for younger Americans who used to be able to ride their bikes to a town park or walk to the mall to meet friends but who now are tethered to their homes for safety or transportation reasons.

I can buy that. I care deeply about our news organization providing journalism that helps our community talk about shared values and resolve issues. I know that this nurtures our democracy. If readers/users deliver breaking news and if journalists go to Facebook rather than downtown streets to gather facts, we may all be the better for the new channels.

This week my 21-year-old daughter and I discussed the book, "Bowling Alone" by Robert Putnam. I lamented the author's premise that television has created a culture in which Americans prefer solo experiences. Putnam contends that this could spell the end to civic engagement. I do worry what life will be like for my daughters ten years hence if their neighbors spend their time in their houses glued to their remote work stations IM-ing the rest of the world. Who will pull them out of the ditch after a 14-inch snowfall if they never have a need or inclination to get to know the neighbors? (For Putnam's answer see http://www.bettertogether.org/.)

The younger generation is just too smart to build that kind of future for itself. And I will be relentless in my warnings. So stay tuned. We hope you continue to buy our newspaper and to come back to our website to see the interesting ways in which we will tell our stories with our new digital tools. We are going to blow your socks off.