Make editorial page a place, not a product: it's time for us to work with, not just for, readers.

On Sunday, June 17, the San Jose Mercury News informed its readers: "Today will be the final issue of Perspective."

Pointing to a seven-year downturn in advertising revenues, editorial page editor Stephen E. Wright told readers that the paper's six-page opinion section--filled that day with analysis and commentary about immigration, the rise in classified documents, clever political cartoons, and local land use problems--"has a relatively low readership."

He went on to say that "after a thorough review, we've determined that the resources devoted to Perspective should be spent on ensuring that we continue to give you the best news coverage of Silicon Valley."

While newsrooms have been cutting positions and space for some time now, editorial boards and opinion pages have made fewer headlines. But if the assessment of members of the National Conference of Editorial Writers who gathered at the Kettering Foundation in Dayton, Ohio, on June 26-27, is any measure of the state of the industry, there is reason for concern.

When the Fort Worth Star-Telegram conducted a focus group recently to redesign the paper, it neglected to include an assessment of the opinion pages. "We are not on the top of researchers' minds," says deputy editorial page editor J.R. Labbe.

Editorial writers like Labbe and others add that they aren't sure who reads their pages these days or who their audience is. Others worry that their pages already have lost too much ground to the blogosphere--that their pages seem boring inside and outside their shops, especially by Web-centric younger readers. Opinion pages appear out of sync with readers who no longer want to be lectured to by a panel of experts.

As fewer readers turn to newspaper opinion pages to inform and help shape their views, that's got industry pundits worrying about their role and relevance.

"The future of democracy in this country will be adversely affected unless editorial pages are protected and have a bright future," John Oppedahl, former publisher of the San Francisco Chronicle, opines.

Assuming there's truth to that, what steps should managers of newspaper opinion pages seize on to ensure the health of the republic--not to mention their own jobs? Following are some of the ideas from the discussion that stuck with us:

* Get reliable data on demographics and shifts in readership to better understand how consumers actually consume news and what they use to shape their opinions.

Two different kinds of research would be useful: Baseline research on the value that opinion pages now provide and research on how people who don't read newspapers form opinions and rank the things they form opinions about.

* Work with publishers to harness technology and new media so that debates generated by opinion pages become ongoing conversations with readers and develop into lively forums on the Web.

* Meet readers where they are--on the Web. Use social networking tools and other technology to engage readers in conversations about their communities. This can be as simple as adding a "comments" feature at the end of editorials. It also is a way to ensure that editorial writers are informed about what people care about and get tips from community members, experts, and others in the know.

* Use the editorial page as a guide to the Internet. With information overload a given, editorial pages are well equipped to serve readers by cherry-picking the best online commentary from the blogosphere. It might also be smart to debate local bloggers at opportune times, like during election season.

* Think of the newspaper as a place rather than a product. The Swiss media writer Bruno Giussani, has noted: "... the newspaper and the television/radio channel are no longer a mere product ... they have to become places. Places where people from the community converge, stop by, make connections, and come back again to build a common future."

While we're not sure we agree that "citizen journalists" will replace professional journalists any time soon (if ever), we believe there is merit to Giussani's point that content "has a social role; it becomes a pretext to create social networks." As he writes: "People don't connect in a void; they connect by sharing experiences or objects, and content (news, videos, pictures, music, links, books, games, opinions, etc.) is an extremely powerful social object."

Journalists of all stripes are beginning to move from working for citizens to working with them--whether that's picking up cell phone photos from the London tube or Virginia Tech campus or inviting readers for online chats with reporters.

Ann Grimes is acting director of the Stanford University Graduate Program in Journalism. Email: [e-mail]

Pamela J. Johnson is executive director of the Donald W. Reynolds Journalism Institute at the Missouri School of Journalism. Email: johnsonpamela@ missouri.edu