A new era begins

My new I.D. card

Four years ago, employees at The Oregonian crowded into the street-level tunnel that serves as an after-hours entrance and exit for those of us who work at Oregon's oldest business (founded in 1850). We were there to salute our retiring publisher, Fred Stickel, who had led the paper for more than 40 years.

Yesterday, we returned to that same venue to launch the beginning of a new era in journalism and a new company. September 30th marked the last day of business for the Oregonian Publishing Co. and the last day of seven-days-a-week home delivery of the daily newspaper. October 1st ushered in a new company, Oregonian Media Group, and a digital-first strategy for those of us at The Oregonian and OregonLive.com. Another new company, Advance Central Services, also started up to provide support services for OMG, as it's known, and other companies that may do business with us.

The scene in the tunnel struck me as surreal. There were three of Portland's finest food carts lined up to serve us a free lunch. There were balloon bouquets; a DJ; a drummer pounding away on plastic 5-gallon cans; speeches by company executives; and tables set up to distribute new employee ID cards and branded swag.

There were veterans like me, folks who've been there 20 years or more, and new employees and interns, many of them a year or less from graduating college -- and all of us counted on to ramp up our digital journalism to serve a changing marketplace of readers and advertisers.

Though many of our loyal newspaper readers, those 50 and older, have made it quite clear they are not happy with the move to four days a week of home delivery in the Portland metro area, industry trends clearly point to the necessity of creating a new, digitally-focused business model. (We're still publishing a print newspaper seven days a week, of course. It's available at more than 2,000 locations in the metro area. And, we've introduced an easy-to-use digital version of the daily newspaper.)

In the four years since we toasted Stickel (and three months said goodbye to our retiring editor, Sandy Rowe) there has been a breathtaking advancement in technology. More and more readers are accustomed to getting their news on mobile devices -- tablets and smartphones -- and a growing proportion of our advertising revenue is coming from the web. With the exploding popularity of social media has come the ability to share stories easily through a mouse click or two and a hyperlink.

New parkas for everyone, with the familiar "O" logo

Though it worked wonderfully well in the past, to continue with a print-oriented approach would be folly. Print advertising and paid circulation have dropped off markedly and that business model clearly is unsustainable now.

I'm one of those who's old enough to have started when a manual typewriter, plain copy paper, an editing pencil, scissors and a glue pot were the tools of the trade. Computers and digital cameras have totally revolutionalized the way we produce a newspaper. And now, with smartphones and blogging software that allow us to transmit photos, videos and texts from almost anywhere -- and to publish that material instantaneously -- well, it's nothing short of astounding.

Editor Peter Bhatia has pledged that The Oregonian will continue to devote resources to investigative journalism. At the same time, we will provide in-depth coverage of community news and continue refining our storytelling using interactive graphics, photo essays and iterative reporting.

It's all too easy to beat up on the press. Readers attack us for any number of perceived flaws. We're biased, they say. Too liberal or too conservative, depending on their own point of view. We're caught up in trivia, we're complacent, we're corporate tools. Whatever.

I work alongside people who are incredibly smart, adaptable, passionate and committed to serving readers. This evolution from print-centric to digitally focused has been gradual but inevitable. Though the past few years have been incredibly painful in terms of buyouts and layoffs that have shrunk the newsroom staff, I am excited by the possibilities presented by the new corporate structure and our new mission. 

I will continue serving as Opinion editor of the Hillsboro Argus and the Forest Grove Leader, writing editorials, soliciting and editing guest columns, helping manage our Twitter and Facebook accounts, conducting reader polls, moderating live chats with newsmakers, and doing whatever I can think of to engage our online and print audiences. And I'll be doing it, like my colleagues, with a digital-first mentality.