Ryan Sholin takes on the idea that newspaper’s lack imagination in dealing with the digital era.

He’s posted several examples of imagination. I’ve added several more. Go add yours.

There was an accusation a while back in the trade press that the newspaper business was failing because it lacked innovators. The charge was since we had failed to invent MySpace or YouTube that we had failed at the big earth shattering idea, we had failed as innovators.

I said then, and I’ll say now, there are all levels of innovation. Newspapers don’t necessarily need to invent the next Google to save itself. It just has to do a lot of small things right and often.

I said in an early post: The answers are out there. There are many, many newspapers doing very good things that are growing audience and growing revenue. No one newspaper has put it all together yet, but we’re getting closer (and I think Bakersfield.com is one that is the closest). We’ll get there.

There all kinds of reasons not to panic — good ideas and good examples, and also, don’t forget, a lot of people still read newspapers and still advertise in newspapers. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t have a sense of urgency, though. There is no room left for complacency or ignoring the obvious. The margin for error has shrunk to nil. But that doesn’t mean we need to listen to the doomsayers and let panic get in the way of sound decisions.