I'm still optimistic

OK, business sucks. The economy tanked even worse in the last few days. Mrs. Peterson and the rest of our longtime print customers are dying off. And online news doesn't bring in the bacon like the cash cow has for so long. (Plus this news outfit is for sale.)

So why am I still optimistic about the U-T's prospects?

Because we're just getting started.

We have yet to build a modern newssite (I am coining that word for lack of a better one) that properly showcases our wares. We have barely begun soliciting and using content created by average folks. There are countless lucrative partnerships out there we could be taking advantage of. And there is a huge amount of money waiting us in self-service advertising, oodles of small businesses that would each pay a little for a little advertising; tons of little transactions that would add up to a lot. We're developing niche products around customer demands and our expertise which will attract and retain new audiences, and those audiences will also add up to a critical mass.
Not only that: We still own the news in this county. We still have the largest news-gathering staff in town, and remain San Diego's most reliable and thoughtful and enterprising news source. Rumors of our demise are greatly exaggerated.

If we did a halfway decent job of aggressively selling our wares , marketing our content outside the paper and the newssite (that word again), we could reach scads of customers we're not reaching now.

Granted, the challenges are huge. Along with the major downer factors listed above, we just went through our third round of buyouts. We're operating with Rube Goldberg-like technology. And there's no telling whether who'll buy us, whether it will be a penny-pinching Simon Legree or a visionary Steve Jobs.

But the economy will turn around, advertisers are going to follow readers online, we'll get better tools and the online news world is bound to grow and blossom. We're well-positioned in a highly enviable market, and we know what we need to do.

This brand has meant news in this county since 1868, and I -- for one, at least -- am not willing to give up that important role just because things have changed. Things always change. They always have.

And we can't give up; having a independent enterprising news source like the U-T to cover the news of the county is too important .We have to make this work. We have got to prevail.