This blog is supposed to be about the search for technological answers to all our industry questions, but I have to make a slight detour.

Suddenly our fear about the future doesn't seem so important in comparison with the experience I just had touring the devastated areas of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast.

I spent the morning on the Freedom Forum bus, weaving in and out of ghost towns in the Lower 9th Ward and seeing up close the damage of Hurricane Katrina. And then we rode along the coastal highway outside Biloxi, Miss., where the destruction only looks more genteel.

As APME President Suki Dardarian said in her opening remarks, the newspaper industry is in "great need of perspective."

You can find perspective pretty easily in New Orleans.

Front-line editors and publishers may think they're in the fight of their lives, but it's not even close. Not when you see front steps and driveways that lead to nowhere. Not when you see the graffiti code on houses and buildings that rescue workers used as a form of gruesome shorthand: 1 dead inside; dog under the porch; no gas. Nobody home.

God, what a mess. Still.

And yet, so much has apparently improved. It's saying something when the manager of a hotel takes the podium to thank conventioneers for coming to his city to spend money.

So, the newspaper industry is doing pretty good, I think, if all we really need to figure out is how to use multimedia intelligently and remain a relevant source of news to our readers. Here in New Orleans, residents understand relevancy, too bad it took a monumental natural disaster to drive home that point. Residents here are still apparently hugging local reporters and editors, thankful for the information they're providing.

How can I get a reader to hug me in Spokane?

Dardarian reminded the group that newspapers have always been challenged by emerging technology; first it was radio, then TV, then our own industry conversion to basic computer technology.

This is a familiar place to us; we can figure this out.

We're "the storytellers who tell the truth."

Dardarian implored editors here to "get on the bus" and get a new perspective.

I did and it was powerful and depressing and sobering.

There are so many stories to tell and we tell them. That's what we do. The rest is a piece of cake.

Carla,

Re: Blog dated 10/25.

Well, I certainly would hug you!!
Your findings during your travels
certainly are of great intrest to me
and really stimulates my elderly
gray matter, such as it is, to a
degree that keeps me wondering what's
next in your blogs. The possiblities
of the printed newsmedia's future are
mind streaching. Look forward to you
next blog and please becarefull in
your travels.

Thank you very much, Mr. Criddle. More to come.