Some people are terrified about the future impact of digital media on newspaper companies. But Ms McCall believes "there has never been so many opportunities for strong media brands." As she sees it, the changes in the media landscape that offer opportunities are three-fold: where newspapers were once limited to text and pictures, they can now expand their storytelling with audio and video; traditional geographic limits are no longer relevant (the Guardian has 7.2 million on-line users in the United States); and formerly passive audiences are being transformed in communities deeply engaged in the media that serve them.

But taking advantage of these opportunities will entail "a significant business transformation," says Ms McCall who cited five challenges that are critical to success.

Here are two of them:

 Learning from failure. "No one gets everything right the first time. To stay ahead, you need a constant stream of activity, and we shouldn’t be afraid to take risks."

 Excel at software development. "We need to realize that our star software developers are as important to our business as our star journalists. I think if we said this three years ago, it would have been heresy, but I think it is true."

Be a venture capitalist

Newspaper companies should act liking entrepreneurs to ensure their digital future, says Mr Benz.

"Let’s stop being prey, let’s start being predators," he says. "Think like a venture capitalist, think like a start-up. There are opportunities here but if you look at Craigslist and Yahoo and Google and cry in your beer, you won’t get anywhere. Start looking for opportunities to attack and start looking for opportunities to do it in a calculated way, in a business-like way."

That’s the thinking that led Scripps to create an "entrepreneur fund", which takes its cue from the venture capitalists by "betting" on interesting ideas. The US$1.5 million dollar fund is available to Scripps companies (which includes newspapers in 18 markets and broadcast television stations in ten) that come up with new media ideas worth exploring.

The goal of the fund is to encourage innovative growth in non-traditional areas to increase audience and advertising share.

A key to the fund is that is starts out small -- the form used to submit ideas is only one page, and the first payment is likely to be two- to three-thousand dollars.

Starting small and cheap allows a flawed strategy to be abandoned early or adjusted to find one that works. "Let’s not spend half a million or a million dollars to find out we may be wrong," says Mr Benz.

"Leaning is the key. If we shame people for getting it wrong, we failed right there," he says.