By Carl Redman
Managing editor
The Advocate, Baton Rouge, La.

People who worry about the future of news are worrying needlessly. News always will be. News is what is new and different. News will be there today and tomorrow. That is the nature of news.

Anyone who's been around the news business any length of time remembers the angst that came with the advent of electronic typesetting, the appearance of computers in the newsroom, digital photography and pagination. The rise of multimedia giants brought great changes in even the smallest newsrooms...

Today, many voices are crying for public attention. News providers are proliferating at a dizzying pace. The challenge for every news provider -- from the Web site of the most staid newspaper to the edgiest blogger -- is to be truthful and accurate. The most credible and complete will survive and prosper.

The difficulty for smaller organizations with limited resources is to change fast enough to grab a share of whatever market develops.

No one really knows what market is going to develop or what it will look like a decade from now. The news business is largely writing its own future -- and making it up as things go along.

About all one can do is make an educated guess at where the flow is going, point his news organization in that general direction and then get everyone in the boat to paddle like hell.