[You probably know our friend Dan Froomkin as the man behind the terrific White House Watch on washingtonpost.com. We know him best from his other day job, deputy editor of our sister site, Nieman Watchdog. When Dan told me he had an essay he wanted to share with us on his prescription for the news industry, I knew it would be something our readers would enjoy. So this week, in four brief parts, Dan will diagnose a few problems, argue for more voice and perspective in our stories, and share his thoughts on how the business can move forward. —Josh]

We’re all in a state of despair these days over our inability to monetize our journalism online the way we’ve been used to doing in print.

A big part of the problem is that we’re doing a really poor job of connecting buyers and sellers on our newspaper Web sites. Solving that problem should be the top priority for the folks on the business and technology sides of our business.

But some of our shortcomings are purely journalistic. We need to come to terms with the fact that one reason we’re having such a tough time is that we are still fundamentally failing to deliver the value of our newsroom to Internet users.

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[Here's part two of Dan's essay on the ills facing American newspapers; part one ran yesterday. —Josh]

While we legitimately want to keep partisanship and polemics out of our news coverage, we need to stop banishing our humanity and the passions that made us become journalists in the first place. When we find a great story, why shouldn’t we shout it from the rooftops? Web sites like the Huffington Post and Drudge succeed not just because they so intelligently aggregate the most eye-catching items from others, but because of the palpable joy they take in plastering a big headline across their homepages. That they prosper largely by linking to our work is not lost on us, but is too often leading to the wrong conclusion. It’s not that we shouldn’t let them link to us, it’s that we shouldn’t cede our passion to anyone.

And rather than play it safe, we should be brave enough to call things as we see them, and not be limited by the conventional wisdom or political triangulation. Indeed, playing it safe is often transparently bogus — and boring, too boot. I would also argue that the notion that by hiding our voices we are maintaining political neutrality is a fig leaf. Much of what we do is inevitably political; choosing what we write about, who we quote, what ideas we take seriously and which we disdain and ignore. Making political decisions through triangulation – trying to stake out a safe middle ground between the two political parties — is still making a political decision. It’s just often a not very good one.

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[Here's part three of Dan's essay on the ills facing American newspapers; you can catch up on the first two parts here. His conclusion runs tomorrow. —Josh]

If we believe our newsrooms have value, then the greatest prizes are the reporters who know and care about their beats. In 2004, not long after I stepped down as editor of washingtonpost.com, I wrote two essays in the Online Journalism Review about my hopes for online newspapers, my frustration at the pace of change and my belief that beat reporters could be our secret weapon online. I argued then — and I still believe now — that if we can better exploit and market the deep, full-bodied understanding that beat reporters have of their areas of expertise, we hugely increase our value proposition to our readers. So we should celebrate our beat reporters, and take advantage of online opportunities to demonstrate their knowledge.

Knowledgeable beat reporters aren’t just stenographers, they are translators, educators, referees and analysts. If we’ve got people in our newsroom who really understand how a certain city or county works, or who are experts in certain policy areas, they should be sharing and showcasing their expertise in live discussions and blogs; should be answering reader questions and composing FAQs, should be on Facebook and Twitter, should be publishing and allowing readers to contribute to their beat notes, and should be writing and updating primers on key players and key issues. And much of the material they create for online should end up in the paper as well — quite possibly instead of the dry incremental news stories they currently produce. They should essentially become the anchor for a community of people who share an interest in that beat. And by making it clear that our beat reporters are not faceless drones, but knowledgeable and accessible figures, we can reconnect with readers who may otherwise decide they may as well go somewhere else for their news.

A renewed emphasis on beat reporting would be good for our newsgathering efforts overall, as well. It would remind us of the value of keeping experienced, knowledgeable, well-sourced journalists covering the same communities or topics over time; and it might encourage us to revisit our beat structures for the new era, as well as create mini-beats for urgent topics that we otherwise only cover reactively.

Tomorrow: Dan’s five-point plan for reconnecting with readers.

Photo by J.D. Lasica used under a Creative Commons license.

[Here's the final part of Dan Froomkin's essay on the ills facing American newspapers, where he proposes a few answers. You can catch up on the entire essay here. —Josh]

So much of what we do, we do because it’s always been done that way. But here are a few examples of how writing for a new medium can encourage us to rethink things we do that make us seem boring and aloof.

— Embrace transparency. Daily newspapers are notoriously non-transparent, an old habit that at least in part stems from our lack of space. We historically haven’t had the column inches to “waste” on an explanation of how we got a story, or what the problems were in reporting it, or to defend it once it’s attacked. We just “let the story speak for itself.” Space seems to have been at a particular premium in the corrections box. But the Internet both demands and facilitates transparency. We should be much more willing to admit errors and explain ourselves – with a guiding principle being that the more people understand how we operate, the more they will trust us.

— Raise unanswered questions. The daily newspaper paradigm is all about reporting what we know. But sometimes, the most important things are the things we don’t know. I would like to see reporters routinely appended a list of important unanswered questions to their stories. Not only would that engage readers, but it might put more pressure on sources to divulge what they know.

— Stop the stenography. Part of effectively calling the B.S. is not covering non-events. Some press conferences and public meetings don’t generate anything worth writing about. Conversely, sometimes the news is not what it initially appears to be. If a source tries to sell us some outrageous spin, perhaps that’s the story right there. Readers will thank us for our honestly.

— More accountability journalism. Reporters should be doing watchdog stories on every beat, not just ones that have “investigative” in the title. Accountability journalism differentiates us and reminds readers online and off of why journalism deserves some of their attention every day.

— Unleash our readers’ voices. In addition to collecting readers around our voices, we should make sure our readers can find theirs, too. And when they are saying something worthwhile, we should make sure our readers are heard, as well. To that end, we should move aggressively to adopt best practices in mass Internet participation. Our goal should be a system that allows good ideas, relevant personal stories, informed opinions and perhaps even consensus on some issues to bubble up to the surface – and even into our reportage.

In conclusion, if our newsrooms don’t change, our future is pretty bleak. It’s my hope that the answer is not smaller newsrooms, or reinvented newsrooms, but newsrooms where our dedicated and hard-working editors and reporters don’t hold back in the name of anachronism and inertia, but deliver their full value to the next generation of readers.

Photo by J.D. Lasica used under a Creative Commons license.