Doom and gloom. Doom and gloom. You’ve heard it ad nauseam and yet so far college students are still undeterred.

The API (American Press Institute) summit this weekend concluded that the newspaper industry is in a “full-blow crisis,” as reported by Editor & Publisher.

Here’s a bit of what’s written by E&P:

The all-day session was described as part “group therapy” and “part business-school class” as participants took in three segments on financial forensics, management tactics for new strategies, and best practices swaps.

The summary of the summit also provided some views of participants keeping their comments anonymous.

One lone person thought the current crisis was due to cyclical force and that heavy cost cutting should do the trick until the economy recovers.

There were a few calls to “radically rethink newsrooms.” One person suggested the hiring of experts such as actual scientists or bank regulators to replace some reporters.

The API said that attendees agreed to reconvene in six months and concludes the report with this unnamed executive who said, “Why can’t we be the disruptors? We have nothing to lose.”

First order of business had been: establish that there is a crisis.

During the financial session, James Shein described as a turnaround specialist and professor at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, explained the various “phases of a crisis” — with a chart resembling an Alpine double black diamond slope. Starting at the top was the phase “blinded” eventually bottoming to “dissolution.” The stage before dissolution is “crisis” and newspapers are in this stage, according to Shein.

“The biggest hurdles to progress [is] the industry’s senior leadership, including some people in this room,” Shein told the group. “I am not sure you can take a look at your industry with fresh eyes.”

It’s all really quite humorous, in general. But job loss is not funny at all. Lives are being ruined monthly with the announcements of cuts and buyouts and all people (in the journalism industry) are looking for leadership in tough times. And it appears that more cuts are on the way.

This is about the time where we start searching for blame and trying to figure out how to make money off the internet again. I think the latter is the most useful.

In one of my favorite periodicals, American Journalism Review, Paul Farhi laments why you shouldn’t “blame the journalism.”

Here’s a sample of what he had to say:

Fact No. 1: Despite everything you’ve heard, newspapers, even these days, remain remarkably popular. Some readers have left us (and many, it should be said, were dropped by cost-conscious publishers who no longer wanted to deliver papers to far-flung subscribers). But what’s largely overlooked in the gloom is how many people newspapers reach each day. Almost 50 million buy one daily, and nearly 117 million read one, according to the Newspaper Association of America’s research. Throw in 66 million unique visitors to newspaper Web sites each month, and the conclusion is inescapable: Lots of people want what newspaper journalists produce.

Fact No. 2: Newspaper readers – so often derided as old and unattractive to advertisers – are actually better educated and more affluent than TV news viewers. The average newspaper, for example, reaches about seven in 10 households with incomes of more than $60,000 annually, compared with about four in 10 for CNN and Fox News, according to Mediamark Research.

Fact No. 3: Every traditional news medium has lost market share, and some have lost more than newspapers. According to the Project for Excellence in Journalism, ratings for late local newscasts on network-affiliated stations across the country were 6.7 percent lower during the November 2007 sweeps than the previous year – a faster decline than newspaper circulation (down 2.6 percent daily, 3.5 percent on Sunday) during roughly the same period. This isn’t a one-time aberration, either. Local TV stations in Washington, D.C., for example, have seen the ratings for their 6 p.m. newscasts plunge 37 percent from 1997 to 2007. Over the same period, the Washington Post’s Sunday circulation has dropped 16 percent. Yet the local TV news business remains relatively strong, with far fewer layoffs and cutbacks and less end-of-an-era weariness than in most print newsrooms.

So if the problem with newspapers really isn’t too few customers, or too many undesirable ones, why are they so threatened these days?

The problem has little to do with the reporting, packaging and selling of information. It’s much bigger than that. The gravest threats include the flight of classified advertisers, the deterioration of retail advertising and the indebtedness of newspaper owners. Wrap all these factors together and you’ve set in motion the kind of slash-and-burn tactics that will hasten, not forestall, the end.

If only those API publishers understood that, maybe they wouldn’t parse the information on what’s working and what’s not. And maybe, just maybe, they’d stop buying properties they can’t afford. It’s killing their business.

If you even think for a second this is about the politics, you’re confused. This is about how the coverage went down at my local newspaper — particularly for the Web site.

I’m proud of what we did election night and how we kicked our local competition’s tail. It was all very satisfying.

First and foremost, we were all over the wire — as was every other newspaper in this country. But to step up our efforts and differentiate our print and online Web products, we made sure that we were “live.” That meant live chat, live blogging and live results. Graphically speaking, we weren’t there like MSNBC.com or even the Sacramento Bee. We just can’t compete in those areas. Instead, we beat out papers like the Bee and the Auburn Journal by making our site more interactive with the chat and blogs. Folks were getting real time results from me, as I facilitated the chat, copied and pasted directly from the wire.

At the same time, users on our site were able to interact more directly after mainly knowing each other from the handles in the comment sections of our site. It was a good way for them to converse in real time. They thoroughly enjoyed it and they thanked me for it. (We used some generated code from ShoutMix.com to insert a chat box into an article page and moderate it.)

The live blogging on the other hand was less successful. It provided some insight for folks and commentary from our community contributors, but it didn’t get the traction I had hoped for. There was really no participation in it other than the staff of my newspaper and our blogging contributors. You can view our Election ‘08 blog here.

All while we were doing these things and updating the feature story on the Web site every 30 minutes or so, I was utilizing Twitter for folks who couldn’t be close to a computer. I firmly believe that Twitter is the greatest free tool there is on the Web. In fact, you can follow me on Twitter or my newspaper.

Unfortunately, Twitter was overloaded with folks posting to it. We ended up seeing a five-minute delay for tweets to arrive, with some not arriving at all. I know, I was waiting on all of them I was doing on my phone. However, they were showing up immediately on the Web site.

I also edited a couple of videos you can find on my newspaper’s YouTube channel.

I look at the election night and think about what worked for us and what worked for others and it gives me a clear idea of how we should approach major events in the future. Live chat is a great tool, blogging should not be a major priority (I know, blasphemy) and we need to be more interactive with maps ready to go. But if you don’t have the ability to throw chat in there, keep an open thread blog going so people are on it. But there’s honestly nothing better than real time and real time results. Trust me, they’ll thank you for it.

(P.S. Our traffic numbers doubled election night despite major parties occurring in our area. I can’t reveal the numbers, but it was significant.)

If there was ever a time when newspapers are at their most important, it’s during elections. After an election like the one in which America has just experienced, particularly its historic nature, newspapers have become the most sought after memento since 9/11.

I also jumped at the chance this this morning to check out the Newseum’s Web site all the major front pages, only to be welcomed to a slow, unresponsive Web site with dial-up type of speed due to the heavy traffic on the site.

I’d hate to see their bandwith bill.

So far, my favorite front page has been the Bakersfield Californian. I have a thing for reverse type and big photos.

But the bigger thing here is that newspapers still have a soft spot in people’s hearts. As a daily piece of history, newspapers will the way many, many folks remember their fondest memories when flash drives, CD-Roms and laptops are long gone. Hopefully, our trees will last as long too.

As a black journalist, I now know how black women feel every day. There are two strikes against black women, as they say. One for being a woman and another for being black.

As election day nears, and as we’ve all witnessed the accusations that 90 percent of journalists are for the DNC and 90 percent of black people are for Barack Obama, I watch stunningly as colleagues and young journalists (like myself) are accused directly and indirectly of being the “liberal elite” as well as helping undermine the Republican party.

I disagree wholeheartedly with both notions.

I’d like to declare myself as an American first (can I do that?). I was born here, so I have my claim and stake in matters. I’m from San Francisco, a middle class black neighborhood (although gentrification is changing that). There are three generations of the Berry family from San Francisco. From the bat, most take the connotation of a San Francisco native as a liberal. I disagree with that as well.

The inherent problem with these arguments (against black people, journalists, and San Franciscans) is the assumption of values. It’s a fallacy of a short and shriveled argument, used time and time again to alienate, discredit or disenfranchise a particular group. Lately, it’s been all the journalist bashing by the GOP. We’ve seen it in on the campaign trail when black people were openly questioned as to whether they can cover the Presidential campaigns fairly. The context of Obama’s “bitter” comments in San Francisco fueled a firestorm. All for what? To prove what point?

You can take away two things from this sort of thinking: There is a double standard for black journalists and San Francisco is a punchline for Republicans.

I honestly believe that while journalists, those practicing and teaching the craft, understand that there is no such thing as objectivity, the masses do not. Furthermore, while journalists consider themselves purveyors of truth and fairness, the masses do not understand the imbalance against bad politicians this social contract generates. They don’t even understand the importance of fairness while maintaining the truth — however inconvenient it is to any particular candidate.

That’s right, I’m putting the blame on bad politicians for what appears like a one-sided press in their damnation of Republican and Democratic candidates. (I’m a firm believer of ” It depends on who’s side your on.” I’d like to say candidate bashing and gratification goes on for both sides.)

Two simple examples you will see on the campaign trail every single day: 1) John McCain = George W. Bush. Not true. While both candidates voted on party lines, only one is tied to an unpopular President. 2) Obama is not a socialist. Our country is. The income tax, implemented in 1913 through the ratification of the 16th amendment, redistributes the wealth more than Obama ever could.

As you probably already know, both sides already have defended themselves against these sort of gray area claims that actually have half truths to them. And the media has reported on it. But then there comes the polls of excessive negative stories on one candidate over the other. And therein lies the reality of fairness.

If one candidate’s party and campaign “throws the kitchen sink” at the other, there’s bound to be more negative stories about the distortions of truth and outright lies in the aforementioned sink. It’s the nature of the beast. Complaining about it is just a natural reaction.

Whereas the accusations of the lack of impartiality, or in actuality fairness, by black journalists is more outrageous in my mind. Would a white journalist ever be accused of covering a white candidate in the same light? It hasn’t happened before and I dare say that in many minds it’s irrelevant. The hypocrisy laced insinuation is racially based and therefore moot.

Lastly, San Francisco is known for many things. Diversity being the most prominent, in my mind. How can a city known for its diversity — of thought, culture and race — have its minority political party be so disregarded by folks in the country? I believe reputations last longer than the truth that bore them.

How much is this rag tag industry I love worth to you? How much do you value the daily proposition at hand?

Today, now more than ever, we’re at a cross roads. No, I’m not writing about our country; I’m writing about the media. To be specific, I mean the uninfluenced, open dialogue platform that is the medium which you are consuming right now — journalism. Specifically newspapers. The analysis of the slow death of this industry is endless, and really ruthless in a lot of respects. On one end, we’re watching as newspaper companies are bleeding from their self-inflicted wounds (McClatchey or Tribune) and on the other we’re watching under-capitalization put the dagger right in the back of broken communities (MediaNews). In the middle, the economy has tanked so far as much to put a strain on many a consumer, businesses and etc., for even the most solid papers to scream uncle. But in the end, we continue to circle the wagons right back to where we started. How much is knowledge worth to you?

Can you quantify how often it is that you depend upon what journalists provide? What a sports journalist provides? Do you know exactly what I do for a living? (Think cave-man like: I both hunt and gather news.) Look, the fat cat days of the ’80s are over. We know that. We are no longer working on a surplus budget in which we can throw money at coverage or people. Furthermore, industrial and philosophical change has divided the best of newsrooms.

Anyone with an ‘old days’ story will tell you that.

But the value of news, the information, the dialogue and the watchdog role is still paramount — at least in my belief. Who is going to follow the standards, set by editors long before me, to verify your sources thrice over? Who’s going to be fair?

I hope to explore that here. That and more.