I'm quoting economist Paul Romer at the top of my presentation Monday to the World Editors Forum in Moscow. Romer has said many smart things, but one of my favorites is this: "A crisis is a terrible thing to waste."

There is a sense of crisis in the newspaper industry. FTM quotes Merrill Lynch analyst Lauren Rich Fine: "We are now concluding that the fundamental outlook for newspapers is even more challenging than we had previously thought; in essence profits generated from an almost monopolistic position within classifieds is being eliminated as the core listings business (for newspapers) could become a loss leader for other online classified models. ... it is a stinker of an industry."

One of my hobbies is visiting military museums when I travel. War is crisis, and the technological progress you can see in military hardware over the course of World War I and II is stunning. Crisis forces reluctant institutions to change.

We need this crisis, and now that we have it, it's our responsibility to find constructive ways to respond. I don't have all the answers, but I believe I have a line on some things we should all be doing.

I'll be talking in Moscow about building and facilitating online community. I'm setting aside the term "citizen journalism," which is a lightning rod for pointless and destructive debate. Instead, I want to talk about social capital, civic engagement, connections, empowerment and --surprise -- improving print journalism. I'll talk about how new and old media can be friends, how the "World Wide" Web can be hyperlocal, and how citizens and pro journalists can help one another.

I may post a blog item or two during the week ... or not. My boat-anchor laptop is not coming along. I prefer to travel light. I'll be in Moscow Saturday-Thursday, then in St. Petersburg Friday-Saturday.

I've been sitting poolside this Memorial Day, allegedly finishing up my Moscow presentation while keeping one eye on the kids, but in reality finding new ways to procrastinate. One way was fooling around with Skype, which I rarely actually use. Not only does Skype support free voice chats, but also free video conferencing, and I discovered today that it's offering free dialout on U.S. and Canadian phone networks through the end of the year. I can point, click, and call my wife's phone to request that she bring me a cold drink. You can imagine the results for yourself.

Futurists Alex Soojung and Kim Pang recently blogged about a speech on telepresence by computer scientist Larry Smarr. Telepresence, as they observe, has a long history. While technology is racing ahead, most of us are sitting here unaware of most of the possibilities. The barriers to change are not in the hardware and software, but in ourselves.

Recently I asked Dan Gillmor to spend an hour with reporters and editors at the Savannah Morning News as part of that newspaper's preparation for its shift to a participative web model. Rather than hauling Dan down to Savannah, we used two-way video through iChat and projected him on a giant screen. This saved a great deal of wear and tear, not to mention airfare. This videoconferencing cost exactly zero dollars. I didn't conduct a survey but I suspect most of the newsroom had never experienced such technology.

Meanwhile, Skype is working to build interactive community on top of its technology platform. Want to convene a live meeting? Point, click, telepresence for the rest of us.

The latest from Pew: 48 million Americans have posted content to the Internet. The majority of them are broadband users, and broadband penetration jumped by 40 percent between March 2005 and March 2006. Significantly, broadband penetration in households with income between $40,000 and $50,000 grew by 68 percent.

Editors, please listen. If you're not rethinking your entire content strategy around participative principles, you're placing your future at risk.

Every newspaper's website can, and should, be the center of online community -- connections, sharing, conversation.

Few are.

Awhile back I mentioned a project that we had in the works. The curtain has been lifted, partially, with the "preview" launch at new.savannahnow.com of an all-new community website associated with the Savannah Morning News. In a matter of weeks, the site will be completed and will replace www.savannahnow.com.

It's been more than a year since we launched BlufftonToday.com, the website that flipped the conventional model on its head, focusing on community interaction that drives print content. With BT we demonstrated that community interaction could yield a larger and more loyal online audience than conventional "online newspaper" approaches.

This new project builds on that foundation, adding Myspace-like social networking features, online groups, a powerful new unified search system, neighborhood-level microzoning, and new tools for enhancing the news report with audio, video and other media assets.

The highly simplified homepage may give some newspaper traditionalists heartburn. News is inside. So is advertising. Up front: Four basic choices and a search engine. Dive in.