“The Future of the News Business,” a three-man panel of journalists at Boulder Startup Week, begins with a literal thud.

One panelist, Boulder Daily Camera editor Matt Sebastian, tumbles out of his faulty chair, causing the 20-30 onlookers to halfway leave their seats to help. The other two panelists, Steve Outing, an adjunct professor at University of Colorado Boulder and “media futurist,” along with Ben Markus, a general assignment reporter for Colorado Public Radio, help him up. After the dust settles, the moderator begins: “What is the state of the news business?”

The answers also came out with a thud — a figurative one.

“The media building I used to work in no longer exists,” Outing says, referring to the Daily Camera’s Pearl Street headquarters. A few minutes later, he passes around the “Newspaper Extinction Timeline,” a predictive infographic by Future Exploration Network.

Sebastian notes that his staff only contains seven writers and editors — down from 15 as of 10 years ago — and that a hedge fund owns them.

Ben Markus, general assignment reporter for Colorado Public Radio, has it easy. Ratings are up. Giving is more possible than ever with mobile donations. And people are stuck in traffic for increasing amounts of time. Take the good with the bad, I guess.

Still, this event was going the way I had anticipated: gloomily.

As the former publisher and editor-in-chief of a niche print magazine, our operation struggled through the market forces for about three years before folding. While my own experience could have been a punishing one, a lesson that would dissuade me away from printed content, I have seen too many success stories to relegate myself a media cynic.

Considering the thought of leaving after a few more grim predictions and anecdotes, a gentleman one row in front of me interjects: “Hey, yeah, so if you all could have your dream newsroom, money not being a worry, what would that look like?”

Sebastian pierced his eyes. Outing looked puzzled. Markus wanted to answer but maybe this wasn’t his concern. The panel could not will themselves to answer the question or didn’t want to entertain it. All came back with nearly the same answers: Beef up the staff.

That’s it? That’s all you have, after nearly 10 years of layoffs and the disintegration of budgets for core staff, photojournalists and freelance writers? How about creating print and digital platforms that are more aesthetically appealing for a new generation? How about create e-commerce sites that don’t take you through a confusing spiderweb of options? How about pay existing staff what they’re actually worth? How about committing to telling stories that the community needs, rather than pulling 50 percent of your content from wire services? You can hire out for these initiatives, but the consensus didn’t suggest that design, interactive media and dynamic content were the grand ideas. Consensus was the same old stale cookie of “scale.”

Fortunately, and maybe ironically, an audience member spoke up. The long-time journalist from Colorado talked about The Texas Tribune, an Austin-based non-profit media organization that is a financially healthy and alternative media source. Markus mentioned The Civil Beat, an investigative reporting outlet in Hawaii, launched by Ebay founder Pierre Omidyar in 2010. There are many others, both print and digital media sources writing and re-imagining this industry in profound ways: Narratively out of New York; Native out of Nashville; This Land, serving Oklahoma City and Tulsa; TheBurg in Harrisburg, Pa.; The Hawaiian Independent, to name a few. See for yourself.

One of the best examples of new media is The California Sunday Magazine. The newly born Sunday insert for the Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle, and Sacramento Bee mimics the long form, creative style of The New York Times Sunday Magazine but displays on the web like a media offering should: text that doesn’t read like a basic web font and photos that supplement and integrate seamlessly. It’s not content. It’s print quality on the web, and few outlets do that with this level of precision and aesthetic concern.

Which begs the question: Why aren’t more media companies wedding strong print and web content with elegant branding and crafted platforms? It could stem from funding and a downsized newsroom, but mainly, I think our newsrooms, magazine staffs and publishing leaders need to get significantly more imaginative to survive this media epoch.

If you left it up to the above panel, I don’t think they’d disagree things that need to change.

Fortunately, the restlessness of human imagination is not letting print and news journalism fall over with a thud.

By Daniel Webster Jr.

Photos by Dani Shae Thompson