(Vivian Vahlberg)

Flying home from the World Association of Newspapers' Digital Publishing Conference in London, I thought of all the practical tips provided for newspapers that want to develop new services through various online, mobile and other digital platforms. Conferees heard how to get ad sales staffs to sell on multiple platforms, how to attract and train people with new skills news organizations really need, how to get hardnosed print journalists to embrace the web, and how to charge more for certain kinds of ads.

As good as all this practical advice was, I hope conferees took away something even more basic and important -- the mindset of the presenters who all, in one way or another, are "making it" in the new-media world. If WAN could only bottle and sell that mindset, WAN's operations would be financed for years to come, and traditional news business would benefit greatly.

All the presenters I saw exuded a sense of possibility, opportunity, excitement and determination. These presenters aren't sitting on the sidelines worrying about change; they have jumped in with both feet. They're totally engaged. They seem determined to figure out how to prosper in the new, digital world -- and to shape that world. They're not spending their time agonizing over whether things will work in the digital space -- they're concentrating on how to make things work. They're energized by the challenges and possibilities they see. They like to try new things (and do it all the time). And, while acknowledging the peril around them, they appear to believe that they and their news organizations can succeed if they go for it.

Excitement about opportunities -- coupled with worry about whether the newspaper industry will be able to adopt the necessary mindset in time -- was a recurring theme of the London meeting.

Chris Stanley, managing director of MatchWork UK Ltd. (a supplier of online classified solutions for publishers in the United Kingdom), told conferees that he has never felt so challenged, stimulated or optimistic about the future for newspaper companies. While new, pure-online players may have the momentum, he said newspapers have considerable strengths that aren't easy to copy: large audiences, brand strength, content, customer relationships, more sales people, territorial coverage and promotional power. He said he'd much rather be a newspaper publisher than a pure online player.

"You should approach this challenge with confidence," Stanley told the WAN audience. "Your strengths are unmatchable."

However, he acknowledged a hurdle: "The big challenge is changing your mentality."

Among the changes in thinking he recommended:

• Stop thinking that everything begins and ends with the print product.
• Start thinking about providing whole solutions for customers.
• Be less defensive. Go on the attack. Don't resign yourself to the loss of any category of revenues. "You can meet the challenge; you cannot not fight (the loss). This is your front line."
• Rediscover your entrepreneurial spirit.
• Do not be a control freak and do all the technical work yourself; outsource it.
• Speed up and be bold; resist the need to analyze things to death. Three months of testing is worth two years of theories. "We're a very strong animal but we're quite slow moving. … Speed is a very important part of the solution."
• Be open-minded. Try things. Take risks.

He quoted a remark often attributed to Charles Darwin that "it is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but those that are the most responsive to change."

Anyone who has followed the Media Management Center's Readership Institute research on newspaper culture knows that's a big "if." (MMC found that the newspaper industry is intensely change-averse -- more like the military and hospitals than any other industry.)

But the fact is that some news organizations, like those "best-practice" newspapers highlighted by WAN, are finding ways to adapt and change -- and, in the process, they're succeeding. And one key component of their success has to be the attitudes their leaders bring to the table.

Thankfully, some news organizations are taking steps to either cultivate the needed mindset and culture -- or to hire more people who have it. Read more here about one of the boldest of these efforts.

What do you think? Please share your thoughts, experiences and reactions by clicking on the comment button below or by e-mailing me at v-vahlberg@northwestern.edu.

I agree with you about the importance and the richness of tradition. There may be lots of interesting things we could cook on Thanksgiving, but in our family we always have cornbread dressing --- from a family recipe perfected by one of my great aunts. Wouldn't be Thanksgiving without it. Just like the U.S. wouldn't be the same without Thanksgiving or the Fourth of July. Traditions knit people, families, communities and nations together. What's always hard to know, though, is when the form of the tradition gets in the way of the substance. What happens to the Thanksgiving meal when you have two children who are vegetarians? We make one batch of dressing with vegetable broth and one with turkey broth, so that everyone can continue the tradition --- even if the tradition gets a little altered along the way. Just like with newspapers or churches; if online news gets kids to adopt a news habit they wouldn't have started without it and if mega churches get them to develop a spiritual life that wouldn't have blossomed without non-traditional music, I'd say, so be it; the important part --- the substance --- of the traditions endure, even though the delivery mechanism may have changed a bit.