FROM THE NEWSROOM:Look to the web

Anyone who does a cursory glance at the state of newspaper journalism these days can’t help but see gloom and doom around every corner. Print revenue is down in huge chunks. Classified advertising is moving online and Craigslist, Yahoo and Google are attacking from every quarter.

Newspapers are dead, the pundits say.

At the risk of sounding Pollyannaish, I take a different view.

I know, I know, no big surprise since my paycheck comes from a newspaper company called Tribune, which itself is going through a new merger with Wall Street icon Sam Zell.

But to me, the newspaper business is really entering an exciting period. Today, we can break news online in a matter of minutes. Reporters at the little old Daily Pilot can have their stories read by people from around the globe.

A couple months ago, when we did a story on an Orange Coast College football player who transferred to the University of Nebraska, our web visitor traffic more than tripled. It seemed the whole state of Nebraska was reading our story.

Another example took place Tuesday, which was the first day of school for Newport-Mesa.

In the past, readers wouldn’t see our coverage until the next day’s paper. This year, we had the story online that day.

It wasn’t but 10 years ago that the idea that we could break news that fast and even compete with television was unheard of.

Thanks to the same Internet that spawned the likes of Google, et. al., the Daily Pilot is just as immediate as television, if not more, and can bring you nearly identical images.

Take a look at our City Hall special report as one example at www.dailypilot.com/cityhall/.

Newspaper executives around the nation see this potential. Editors, publishers and reporters are changing the way they do business to meet the needs of the growing online audiences. The Daily Pilot’s web audience alone has grown from a mere 1,500 visitors a day in 2005 to nearly 7,000 visitors a day now.

And it’s going to continue to grow.

One of our goals is to make the newspaper website the No. 1 spot for the community to go for all of its needs, whether it be local news and commentary, local advertising, local sports or local services. As my boss likes to tell me, if you want to get a dog license, you should be able to find it on the Daily Pilot website. And guess what? You can by clicking on our Community Links, www.dailypilot.com/community_links, and clicking on the City Government links.

We have also added a Daily Bytes dining page. The same concept applies. Readers who want to get news and information about local restaurants should go to www.dailypilot.com/dining. If you want to make a reservation or vote in a poll about your favorite eatery, or find all the steakhouses in Costa Mesa, this is the spot.

I see this as just the beginning. We will continue to create more and more online features and experiences for our readers, advertisers and customers.

While I can’t say for certain that the print version of newspapers is going to last forever, though I hope it does, I have nothing but high hopes for our electronic future.

No matter how flashy and electronic we get down the road, some basics still need to be applied. I’m guilty of violating those basics in last week’s column. In my column, I used a clichéd phrase, “towing the line.” Besides the sin of using a tired and worn line, the main problem with that phrase, as several readers and even some staffers pointed out to me, is it was wrong.

The correct saying is “toeing the line.”

I stand, red-faced and embarrassed and corrected. But I’m also grateful our readers keep us honest.

As one of them pointed out in an e-mail, “If mistakes are made on small things, how can reporters be trusted on the big things?”

She’s absolutely right and we need to and will do better in the big as well as the small.