Today, tomorrow: the raison d'etre. (Convention Panels).

What should tomorrow's opinion pages look like to help sell the newspapers of the future?

The answers, at least from three distinguished editors who addressed that question during the Nashville convention, lie in modestly tweaking the content of those pages to address new challenges while, at the same time, getting back to some op-ed basics.

What are those basics? What won't change?

Tomorrow's opinion pages, they agreed, will continue to stand out, among the surrounding media noise, as islands of reflection, careful thought, and reasoned argument. They'll continue to be spaces that challenge prevailing notions, provide authoritative analysis, and present incisive alternatives and solutions. They will continue to champion causes. But they will do all these things with a higher level of inventiveness and increased journalistic savvy.

Despite increased competition and multimedia proliferation, newspaper opinion pages will not soon lose their role as moderators of community discussion and creators of consensus.

"There is something about this thing that we do that is incredible," said Gail Coffins, editorial page editor of The New York Times. "We host a community forum every day."

The coming generation of newspapers, however, will need to work harder "to get more diversity on the op-ed page ... to try to get people to feel they have not been ignored."

Concerning the latter, San Jose Mercury News editorial page editor Dennis Ryerson pointed out his newspaper is trying to cope with burgeoning ethnic and cultural diversity, which includes people who do not read or may not use English in their homes. To address these potential readers, the Mercury News has introduced Spanish and Vietnamese editions to supplement their primary product.

"Good owners know newspapers have to reflect their communities," he said, adding one of his goals in San Jose will be to "cycle in more writers [into the opinion pages] that look like our readers, rather than that look like our editorial staff."

Among the basics to which op-ed editors need to return time and again, Ryerson said, is the primary and educational functions of their pages. The "creeping, no, galloping" trend among newspapers to place columnists on news pages "presents a huge challenge to us."

The imperative of innovation, together with dear argument and a renewed sense of direction and urgency within oped pages, are keys to combating the industry's growing emphasis on columns at the expense of the influence of editorials.

Asked Coffins: "What's the point of editorials when you've got all these people wandering around, expressing points of view on the news pages?"

Paul Gigot, editorial page editor of The Wall Street Journal, weighed in on the same theme: "That's the reality [faced by] editorial pages.... Had I known what I could get away with on the front page, I don't think I would have joined the editorial page," he joked.

One way to restore the impact of opinion pages, Gigot said, is to give editorials "a really strong point of view ... you have to get noticed."

Quoting Robert Bartley, one of his predecessors at WSJ's editorial page, Gigot said editorials must deliver strong viewpoints "at muzzle velocity.... You have to do that to develop a following." Strongly worded editorials create a following, he said, which is necessary "to develop a shared sense of community."

Regarding the trend toward the appearance of opinion on news pages, Gigot advocated both overt and covert counterstrikes.

"I view ourselves [editorial writers] as being in competition with our news side.... [Editorial writers] should try to think more like reporters, even as reporters try to think like editorial writers."

Each editorial, Gigot explained, should give readers something they didn't know or couldn't have gleaned from news pages alone. Opinion pages, therefore, reward readers with added value and additional information and insight.

Newspaper editors, whether in news or opinion, must see themselves as being in the "education business," Ryerson said. Creative restatement and repetition of strongly held views are necessary to "overteach" readers. The common response among editors that "we already did that," whether it be to a story or an editorial idea, is a cliche to be avoided.

"Readers don't read us like we do," Ryerson said. Multiple opportunities often arise to teach the same lessons, tell similar stories, and present a point of view in inventive new ways.

The news pages may be the bulk and brawn of today's newspaper industry, but the opinion pages, Ryerson said passionately, are its raison d'etre.

"Why did we get into this work? To effect change ... and to do it while we're still living.... We have to have a soul; we have to stand for something. If we don't have a soul, frankly, we're going to fail as a business, as well as in our leadership role."

NCEW member Larry Cornies is editor of the London Free Press in Ontario. E-mail him at [e-mail]