Whenever I talk about the future of the newspaper business -- and I'm talking about 20-30 years down the line, not next week -- I get that weird "Childhood's End" vibe. For those of you who haven't read the novel, it's basically about a next step in human evolution. It's not really scary, bad or evil, but it's ... uncomfortable.

I feel the same way when thinking about how the newspaper industry can evolve as people move away from that thing that arrives on your doorstep (hopefully) once a day with news that is at least six hours old.

And people are moving away, as the latest circulation numbers would attest. People in their 40s, 50s and up by and large aren't canceling their subscriptions; newspapers will probably have most of those people until they're either dead or too befuddled to read. It's the people who've grown up with the Internet era who aren't buying the daily paper -- those my age and younger. It's not that these people are necessarily more ignorant or uninterested -- they're still getting their news, and they're getting it online ... for free.

How have newspapers adapted to this new reality? Poorly. Very poorly.

Sure, some newspapers are having a measure of success online. The Wall Street Journal has a substantial number of people willing to pay $70 a year for access to much of their content. The New York Times has a substantial number pay $50 a year for access to their columnists and voluminous archives.

However, the Times and the Journal -- along with possibly the Washington Post, are in a unique position. Those three are truly national papers. The Los Angeles Times could be considered a fourth, but that would be a little bit of a reach.

For other newspapers, identical models simply won't work. The Witchita Eagle can't put 90 percent of their content behind a subscription wall and still expect people to visit their site. Newspapers need to wean themselves off of the print subscription model. The price subscribers pay for the paper nowadays probably doesn't even cover the paper the thing is printed on, let alone the ink -- most of that money goes to the independent contractor delivering the paper to your doorstep.

There are ways for newspapers to increase their online readership and make money in the digital age, but too few of them have people who have either grown up with the Web or who are seriously Web-saavy helping make these decisions.

Last week, when the circulation numbers came out, radio talk show host Hugh Hewitt had newspaperman/columnist James Lileks on to talk about what newspapers can do to increase readership -- both online and off. (You can read a transcript of that interview here.) The first suggestion from Lileks was that newspapers should focus their news to be "intensely local." Why? Because if it's national or international news, readers have probably already heard about either on television, radio or ... online.

Local news is where the local newspaper has the edge. Unfortunately, it's an edge too many of them aren't using.

The local newspaper is going to cover things that aren't going to appear on your Yahoo! home page or the front page of Google News. Lileks went as far as to suggest that newspapers swap their front page and their metro section. I wouldn't go so far, but it would certainly be a gutsy move to have a six-story front page contain one national/international story, one interesting feature and four local news stories.

Don't expect a newspaper of a circulation greater than 100,000 to even try this. Unfortunately the "mid-major" newspapers (those who are ranked between No. 5 and No. 50 in the United States) are probably the least likely to make serious changes that confront them this new paradigm. They will wait for the bigger newspapers with more resources to innovate. Smaller newspapers can get a much bigger bang for their buck by simply assigning one or two people to growing their online product. (Of course, one or two people could be 10 percent of their newsroom staffing.)

Another point made by Lileks that really rings true is the observation that the vast majority of newspaper home pages are an absolute design disaster. Every department wants a link on the homepage, and the paper's online component says "no problem." The result is a mishmash that makes things almost impossible to find. Compare and contrast The Washington Post's home page with say the Chicago Tribune's. The Post's site is much cleaner (but still not perfect), while the Tribune is the aformentioned mishmash. And there are still other newspaper sites that make the Tribune look almost minimalist.

Newspapers spend significant amounts of money on page designers such as myself to design a newspaper page that draws the reader in and alerts people to the significant stories of the day. But when it comes to their Web presence, it's nothing more than the same template every day with stories and photos crammed into predetermined holes.

Here's a couple of extra free ideas for whatever newspaper is interested in embracing them.

• Your newspaper's sports columnists are valuable. They're probably the paper's best asset. Give away their columns, but put their blogs behind a pay wall and charge $20 a year for access to non-subscribers. Of course, a blog is not enough in and of itself, the sports columnists should also do Web chats, podcasts (both video and audio). Put clips of their interviews with the hometown sports star on the site. Sports fans pay ESPN.com a pretty penny each year for their "Insider" feature. I can assure you that fans of Kansas basketball would fork over $20 a year for that kind of access to extremely in-depth coverage of their alma mater. Oh, and that $20 a year that you're going to charge? It should go without saying (but some newspapers need to be told) to make sure people can sign up for the service and pay for it easily online.
• I'm sure all of you newspaper management types have seen people carrying around those small white or black rectangular things with the white headphones. They're called iPods and they've made Apple and its shareholders rich. Problem: People can't read the paper and drive to work at the same time. Solution: Have someone take each day's top four or five stories (plus briefs) from each section and read them into a computer audio recording program and turn them into podcasts. You would have a separate podcast for every section of the paper. Have them done so that people can download them each morning to their iPods for the drive into work. Oh, and you can sell commercials on the things just like radio stations do.
• The 2008 presidential election isn't far off. Presidential hopefuls are going to be coming to your newspaper editorial board to make their case. Videotape the meeting and put it up on your site. Put up a transcript. Put up a podcast of the meeting. You ask smarter and tougher questions than those silly ones that Politico.com read from Internet users.

There's a lot more newspapers can do, but if they want that insight, they'll have to hire James Lileks. If he's already got a new job, then I suppose I can be your second choice. But I'm only a little bit cheaper.

In the meantime, expect newspaper circulation to continue to decline until they really do get a clue. For years online sites have been hiring newspapermen and women for their skills and knowledge for producing good content. Newspapers had better start hiring people from online sites so they can figure out how to adapt their content to the Web world.

A related article in Monday's Wall Street Journal [subscribers only] can be found here.