A hunger for engagement with a changing world: aging ink-stained wretches? Guilty. out of touch with a transforming industry? Look again.

When H. L. Mencken addressed the National Conference of Editorial Writers in 1947, he pulled no punches in his assessment of the craft or its practitioners.

Dull. Uninformed. Isolated, Michael Gartner, author of Outrage, Passion, and Uncommon Sense, reminded us at the 2005 convention. "A bunch of old reporters with bad legs and old deskmen who no longer could spell."

Ahem.

Well, Mencken would still probably find a bunch of old (yet still vital) reporters in the crowd. He'd see more women to be sure. But he'd see also a new species of editorial writer emerging as newspapering changes beyond what Mencken could have foreseen sixty years ago.

Among his audience would be budding videographers, bloggers, and podcasters--all devoted to refuting Menckeffs allegation of complacent isolationism. He would see ink-stained wretches consulting their always nicely turned-out broadcasting colleagues for tips on audio and video recording.

He would see a hunger for engagement.

Many NCEW members have jumped into the transformation of the newspapering industry, engaging readers in new ways:

* NCEW board member Dick Hughes posts early drafts of his Sunday editorial on the Web, requesting reader comments before it is finalized and put in the print edition.

* Stephanie Gattman of The Truth in Elkhart, Indiana, donned a robe and straight face to read a tongue-in-cheek eulogy for "Indiana Time" in her newspaper's first video editorial.

* NCEW President J.R. Labbe and a staff photographer visited a cemetery together then merged their talents into an emotional slideshow that honors the sacrifice of war and military service.

* Scripps Treasure Coast Newspapers, in a take-off on the reality TV show Survivor, had readers voting for the best community blogger. It was so successful, editorial page editor Larry Reisman launched a sequel: Survivor: Treasure Coast Blogfest 2.

* On election night, the Dallas Morning News editorial page staffers indulged political junkies. They took their laptops home to blog their impressions as the results came in.

* Podcasts of the San Francisco Chronicle editorial board meeting with singer/activist Bono ranked among the highest hits for the whole newspaper.

* Eddie Roth at the Dayton Daily News is morphing from editorial writer into self-taught videographer as he tries to do a multimedia presentation once a month.

This can be a scary new world for editorial writers, especially since many of us arrived in our positions at mid-career without the Internet savvy that is second-nature to Generations X and Y.

But the possibilities are endless, as these and others are demonstrating. The NCEW board recently expanded the Broadcast Committee's role to include a focus on New Media.

Check out the NCEW Innovations page, listed under Member Services on ncew.org for more ideas.

Please send in links of your work to share with members at kriley@ seattletimes.com

Kate Riley, editorial writer for The Seattle Times, is NCEW's Innovations Committee chair. E-mail [e-mail]