A five-step program from Online Journalism Review's Robert Niles:

Step One: The answer is 'yes'

Analysis paralysis has been killing newsrooms' response to new online competition for the past decade.

A reporter's outside discussion board might publish something that would embarrass the paper.

A newsroom video blog might not attract and readers or advertisers.

A newsroom blogger might stray from the paper's core mission, hurting morale in the newsroom

All very valid "mights." But here is what is certain: A newsroom that doesn't do something fresh which connects its employees with more readers and advertisers, right now, is going to find itself on the auction block very soon.

Jack Lail, Managing Editor/Multimedia at Scripps' Knoxville News-Sentinel (one of the few chains that hasn't been bought, folded or targeted in the Internet era), offers a better approach: "We had a food writer who said, 'I'd like to do a regular cooking video.' We didn't say, we'd think about it or discuss the potential with advertising and marketing. Nope. We paired her with an online producer and we shoot two segments a month in the writer's kitchen. The videos go into a vblog, onto our local channel in the AP Video Network and into YouTube."

As I wrote on the ONA list: "If the topic of the outside blog is of interest to more than a handful of offline acquaintances, why not have the reporter publish the blog 'in house?'"

Here are the other four (click through to the post for details):

• Step Two: If your tech can't support it, go outside
• Step Three: Forget the branding, but not the ads
• Step Four: Give 'em a taste of the action
• Step Five: Help your innovators communicate