Edit pages must adapt or risk alienation of readers: embracing the great equalizer.

In hindsight, we'd be a lot better off if we--journalists--had invented the World Wide Web.

We could have set all the rules, designed it to maximize the dissemination of news and opinion, and made sure no one else could use it unless we specifically said so.

After all, that's what we've done with newspapers and magazines for a few hundred years now, and it's worked out fairly well for everyone. Readers stayed informed, publishers made money, and we scraped some professional enjoyment out of the deal.

Unfortunately, we didn't invent the Web; some guys in Switzerland did. And most of us weren't as prescient as the fellows at The News & Observer in Raleigh, North Carolina, whose NandO site fifteen years ago was arguably the first serious effort at pairing a print newspaper with an online "edition."

We've smartened up quite a bit in the past decade or so, and the past five years have brought a whirlwind of activity as publishers and companies realized this Internet thing might be around for a while.

But when you enter a world that's already firmly established its own social and functional parameters, you abide by them, regardless of the old parameters to which you're accustomed. You dance to the tune that's playing.

So we can either take our dancing shoes and go home, or figure out the steps everyone else already knows.

Adapting means changing, which hasn't traditionally been our strong suit. Especially on editorial pages, which resist trends and outside influences better than any other part of the newspaper. However, the Internet is not the newspaper, and the sooner we accept this, the sooner we can make it work for us "opinionados." (That would be "opinion aficionados" Work with me here.) The fundamental difference--for us--between printed pages and HTML pages is our loss of control.

We are the gatekeepers for one but simply one among the masses on the other. That loss of omnipotence can be jarring and, unfortunately, lead to panicked attempts to regain some measure of that control.

The irony is that we can retain that authority by letting it go.

Our online readers are there for a reason. Maybe they like the facility of the Internet, or maybe they hate getting ink on their fingers.

But I can guarantee they like being able to say what they want, when they want, as much as they want, without picking up the opinion section day after day wondering if their letter or call or op-ed is even going to appear, and if it does, whether that stupid editor butchered it.

The Web is the great equalizer. If people don't like your site, they'll easily go somewhere else, which is an entirely new concept for us. Responding by sticking our noses in the air and saying "good riddance" because we're "The Newspaper" is petty and ignorant of our new reality.

What is our new reality? Anonymity, unchecked lengths, meandering topics and commentary, relatively insignificant subject matter, personal spats, repetitive points, and silly jokes. Essentially everything our printed pages are not.

(Note I did not mention vulgarity, libel, or graphic content. We still must maintain a degree of civility; I'm not advocating anarchy.)

The Internet brings more people into the opinion realm, and not all of them want to discuss pressing social matters or create elevated levels of discourse. Some just want to talk about the bad haircuts on American Idol last night. And if we don't allow them to talk about that, they'll find someone who will.

These are not "our" opinion sections anymore, folks. The readers own them. We're now referees, moderators, traffic control officers ... not gatekeepers. We must assert our control judiciously and transparently and give our readers much longer leashes.

People are always going to exchange ideas. The question is, will they do it on our Websites, or will we push them away to someone else's?

Matt Neistein is the assistant editor for community conversation at The Post-Crescent in Appleton, Wisconsin. E-mail MNeistein@ appleton.gannett.com