The first sign that washingtonpost.com is different is the view. The online newsroom of 65 is housed on the 12th floor of a Virginia skyscraper with a panoramic view of D.C. and beyond into Maryland. The modern, industrial-looking office of glass, blond wood, monitors and miles and miles of cable is bathed in natural light.

But as is the nature of natural light and computer screens, many of the blinds are drawn.

Wouldn't you want to see the Washington Monument and the dome of the U.S. Capitol if you could?

Several departments operate out of this sleek newsroom: the 'home page team' that edits and produces the 'face' of washingtonpost.com; the multimedia department, which edits all the video for the Web site and partner TV stations; and Live Online, the department that runs more than 60 hours of live chat every week.

Washingtonpost.com employs a total of 250, which is bigger than many newsrooms I've visited!

For almost two years now, washingtonpost.com has been operating two home pages: one that focuses on national news and one on local news. What you get depends on zip code. Readers in Spokane who go to washingtonpost.com get the national version.

A news desk of editors and producers is responsible for those home pages. Topical section editors (politics, business, foreign and national news, etc.,) manage the rest of the site's content.

The news desk is literally staffed 24-hours-per-day. The horseshoe-shaped desk faces out onto two banks of TVs that carry CNN, Fox, MSNBC, local D.C. news stations and White House feeds. Special computer screens at each work station rotate through a dozen Web sites from around the world every 10 seconds: MSNBC, FOX, the BBC, Reuters, New York Times, The Drudge Report.

When editors are trying to decide how to play wire stories on the site, they're actually choosing from among their own national and foreign correspondents. This is not Spokane, where wire often plays second-fiddle to local news.

The washingtonpost.com news desk has a counterpart in the downtown D.C. office. It's called the continuous news desk and is staffed by editors and general assignment print reporters. The continuous news desk, called the CND, is the bridge between the online and print worlds. Editors from the two offices are on the phone throughout the day, talking about what stories to elevate on the site, what local stories are in the works, and where they'll play in the next morning's paper.

In this world, the Web is king.

Ultimate decisions about the content on the site rests with washingtonpost.com and I get the sense the online folks like it that way. Although separate offices makes communication tricky, the online side likes their autonomy.

More than one person told me that if the two newsrooms were physically integrated, the print side would take over, and "their caution might overtake the risks" the Web side is willing to take in the name of speed and relevance.

To their credit, though, I'm told the print reporters and editors "get it." They know how good the Web site is and how important continuous news is to their franchise. In fact, reporters are supposed to work through the CND when it comes to pitching their stories, but many of them end up calling the online news desk directly to lobby for better play on the Web.

It does seem strange, though, to be working with locally-produced content in such a disconnected way. It just seems odd not to see print reporters and editors interacting with their Web operation.

(The reason, I'm told, is economic: the online operation, a separate division of the company, is not a union shop. The main newsroom is.)

The takeaway from the Post's online news desk is this: the Web is our future. Not having print folks in the same room puts the spotlight on the Web and that enabled me to see how dynamic an operation it is. There is no cultural battle going on between print and online. There are no debates about whether to post a local story or hold it back for print. There is no staffing shortage. No creativity shortage. This is an online world. It's all about rotating stories as they develop, monitoring wire feeds and online competition. It's about being "of the moment."

The most telling moment came during a planning meeting when editors disagreed over the value of a wire story out of South Africa about a gay marriage proposal. The story was leading the national home page, but print editors downtown thought it should be downgraded in favor of a local story about Bush's upcoming trip to Vietnam. The Bush story was going to get good play in the next morning's newspaper, but the South Africa story was likely to be somewhere deep inside the wire pages.

It's not about tomorrow, replied the Web editors, it's about right now.

What is important right now, not what is going to be made important in tomorrow's newspaper. By then, the news will have changed and the moment will have gone.

Highlights:

Walking past Bob Woodward's office in the main Washington Post newsroom. What journalist doesn't think that's cool?

Walking past the Investigative Reporting Department. An entire DEPARTMENT!

Washington Post Ombudsman Deborah Howell's advice to "stay close to your readers" and "do local news." For small papers like The Spokesman-Review, "local, local, local is your advantage."

And finally this, from Deputy Multimedia Editor Chet Rhodes, who works in an office called "the cave," which he describes as a cramped submarine. The two-room closet is crammed floor-to-ceiling with computers, servers, TV monitors, cables, video cameras and audio equipment.

All multimedia for The Washington Post and washingtonpost.com is produced out of the cave. There is a staff of high-end videographers and producers, which is what you'd expect. But Chet is in the process of training print reporters who want to learn how to shoot video. So far he's trained 40. Reporters spend four hours in the online newsroom. The actual equipment lesson takes an hour. The rest of the time is spent on "eating, meeting and brainwashing."

Chet doesn't expect Emmy-quality production from them; they're trained to ask sources two questions on camera and capture some B-roll. That's it. The reporters use $300 Panasonics with simple on/off buttons and small tripods.

"We're not asking them to replace their journalism, but to add spice and flavor to what they do," says Chet.

Chet appears to be a pragmatist: he'd rather teach "visual grammar" now while he can control it, because enhancements in personal devices are going to mean that cell phones will soon enough be able to take high-quality video.

"You're going to get smart reporters who have personal devices they bought at Radio Shack for their own use who'll be at some event and a light bulb will go on and they'll say, "I can shoot video of this' and they'll bring it back to you."

Chet wants them to come back trained.

We can't lose sight of our print values, says Chet, who has a TV background, but we do need to do a better job of branding so readers don't replace us with someone else.

TV anchors are better at branding than print reporters, he says. Video can help level the playing field. Video helps reporters become part of their communities rather than aloof; video brings a little 'personality' to print reporters.

But what we do with our journalism is still up to us.