Making the big change in media work to your advantage: local editorial writers and editors will continue to be a--if not the--most valuable source for political information, informed judgment, and relevant local opinion, but only if we stay ahead of the changes going on right now.

Local newspaper and television editorial opinion is in crisis. That's the first thing I learned from your NCEW board at its meeting in April. Board members see the present as a time of rapid, scary, demanding change.

And the change will speed up. The big question is: Do you, as editors and writers working for local newspapers and television stations, have a future--and if you do, what is it?

Someone gave Alan Kay, the computer scientist, credit for a good quote that also pertains to you: "The best way to predict the future is to invent it."

To be blunt: I think that's what you have to do, what your board wants to do, and what your recent convention was all about--to get you thinking about re-inventing what you do. And I'm talking both about the craft and profession of editorializing and about NCEW.

The business model for newspapers and local stations is changing, and that means the journalism model has to change, too. Publishers and station managers can't pay for what they used to pay for. But the change is broader and more fundamental than just a change in profitability: Your audience is changing, and your online competition now does much of what you do--and does it cheaper and often better.

When I was publisher of the San Francisco Chronicle, I remember telling people in late 2001: Look, the stock tables are going to go--and they did shortly thereafter, because everybody uses the Internet to deal with the markets. Classified, which had dropped more than half in linage and revenue in two years, was going to continue to go down--go look at craigslist. Do we need all that sports agate when most of the fantasy football league players are playing on the Internet? Do we really need a TV book when Comcast has scrolling logs and TV Guide is going out of business?

And it's not just commoditized information like stock tables that is moving out of newspapers. It's also opinion journalism. In 2001 Michael Bauer, the Chronicle's restaurant critic, had the reputation of being the leading local authority. Everyone told me that.

Maybe they didn't agree with him, but he was the authority. But I went to a dinner party recently with a bunch of foodies--half of San Francisco considers itself foodies--and they all said they no longer automatically go to Bauer first. There are now so many other sources online about restaurants in San Francisco, including sites that collect the views of other foodies, that Bauer's position has diminished.

Watch out if you're in the newspaper or television opinion business, of whatever kind.

So, what will be the New World Order for local newspapers and television stations? Here's what I think.

Everybody is going to be smaller and way more local, if not totally local. National and international news and opinion will either disappear or be so reduced in emphasis that it won't matter much.

Newspapers and local stations will start to become much better guides to the Internet than they are now. Both will continue to be among the most trusted sources of much local news.

And both will continue to be the providers of certain local advertising that won't work well on the Web, such as timely, full-color, newspaper-size display ads, and papers will remain a cheaper alternative to the Post Office for delivery of some stand-alone print advertising products.

Local editorial writers and editors will continue to be a--if not the--most valuable source for political information, informed judgment, and relevant local opinion--but only if they stay ahead of the changes going on right now.

But, most importantly, you will all be married to the Internet. You will all be bloggers, even as you continue to provide information in print and through broadcasts. And, most importantly, you will be mostly interactive.

NCEW members need to organize for the future around three questions: What, first, is the very future of editorializing? How can editors and writers and NCEW use the Internet to their advantage? And how can NCEW expand its influence, relevance, and membership?

First, board members believe they need to be more active within NCEW.

Second, communication seems to be the overwhelming reason to belong: The March member survey showed that the five top reasons to belong to NCEW are the listserv, The Masthead, the newsletter, the critiques, and the annual convention. So if you like NCEW and want to make it better, go help make one or all of them better.

Third, the regional conferences seem to be a hit, but you don't have enough of them. Help set one up.

Fourth, NCEW needs to make its case better on behalf of the business of editorializing and on behalf of NCEW It needs a better internal and external marketing strategy.

As for the Internet and the future of editorializing, they are now one and the same. Will print and local broadcast news disappear soon? No, but much more of your working lives will be the Internet. I'd say that if it isn't true already, fifty percent to seventy-five percent of your annual editorializing budgets should be devoted to the Internet within a year.

All of you now use the Internet for research. And you publish on the Internet. That's not enough. You need to blog. You may want to podcast. Your newspapers may want to partner with broadcast and, well, broadcast, too. Above all, you need to see yourselves as interactive.

You know you have a great deal more competition on the Internet for both institutional opinion and freelance, or op-ed style opinion along with interactive letters to the editor--call them blogs--and just a vast sea of opinion. But apart from throwing your own stuff out there on the Internet, it's obvious that nobody really knows what's on the Internet. The other day I Googled "political opinions on Iraq" and got back 51,400,000 citations.

So I'll make a pitch that the Internet needs an editor, or a lot of editors. Why don't you edit the Internet? You have the expertise, the judgment, and both the Internet and non-Internet publishing platforms of your newspapers and television stations to display and promote what you know.

Whether it's charter schools, mercury pollution in the water, better local transit--whatever you're offering opinions about--well, offer them. But then tell me where I can find other opinion on the Internet on the same subject, pro or con or totally off the wall. And then tell me where the ten most interesting Internet opinion pieces are that day--about anything. An algorithm is not an editor, at least not yet, but you are.

For the time being, you have remarkable strengths. Your staffs have a unique local function--they are often the most knowledgeable members of their communities on issues; they have excellent writing and presentation skills; they directly connect on a daily basis with their communities and have regular access to opinion-makers. And they have recognized credibility, the lack of which is still a problem for many bloggers. No one else has this set of attributes.

You are in an enviable position, much more so than Washington bureau chiefs or national and international news editors--they are all quickly being made redundant. You have authority and believability, and your institutions have amazing local--emphasis on local--brand identity. But can you say today that your editorial page is the most interesting page in the paper or your editorial broadcast is thought of the same way at your station? If not, why not?

You have insight, power, time to act and the tools to use. And your professional organization can help in ways that others can't or won't. You have a relatively large membership--about six hundred, I guess, or maybe a quarter of all the daily newspaper and local TV editorialists. And I see a board of directors that is smart, committed, and energetic--qualities not always found in the leaders of other journalism organizations I've been a member of.

Someone gave the Sioux Indians the credit for the saying, "If you don't know where you are going, any path will take you there."

I think you've got a short time to make some big changes in where you are going, both individually and as an organization--before it's too late. Figure out where you must go. You have a great chance, and it's right now.

EDITOR'S NOTE: John Oppedahl is the former publisher of the San Francisco Chronicle and The Arizona Republic; he also has held a variety of management positions with the Detroit Free Press, The Examiner in San Francisco, the Dallas Times Herald and the Los Angeles Herald Examiner. John was hired by the NCEW board as a consultant to recommend changes in the organization's direction, many of which were adopted during the 2006 Pittsburgh convention. He presented his recommendations in a speech at the convention, on which this essay is based.