I can’t remember when I was more pleased to see a year end.

Hardly anyone in the newspaper business thinks of 2007 as a good year. In many ways it was a disaster. Continuing circulation declines, advertising revenue declines, economic uncertainty and growing competition from the digital world led many newspaper diehards to argue the medium is doomed.

I’ve never been that sort of pessimist. There has never been a greater need for quality journalism and there has never been more opportunity for quality journalists. The mainstream, mass-market, seven-day newspaper may not survive as we know it. But news on print won’t go away even as the industry capitalizes on all of the new delivery platforms available to us.

So 2007 was a bad year, nationally and, finally, locally. The Spokesman-Review had avoided for several years the severe cost reductions and staff downsizing experienced by most daily newspapers. But last year, that all caught up with us and the newsroom downsized through retirements, voluntary resignations and, most sadly, a number of involuntary layoffs.

As 2008 begins, it seems a good time to update our readers on how the newsroom has reorganized itself for the immediate future and describe a few of our goals for the year.

Late last year we moved from three daily editions to one. We rolled the Spokane Valley and Idaho editions into the city edition, adding a regional page inside the Northwest section for Idaho and Spokane Valley news that doesn’t break the Page 1 or Northwest lineups.

We reorganized the news staff to better utilize the smaller number of reporters. Staff was cut in Idaho and in the Valley, but we beefed up the local news reporting staff that works for our weekly Voice sections and the Handle Extra. During 2008, those immensely popular sections will continue to grow and all of them soon will be available free on news racks throughout the communities they serve.

We formed a special reporting team that will create daily and weekend packages that serve both print and online readers. And we have added technical, multimedia, editing and reporting staff to our online department. As a result you can expect an explosion of content that takes advantage of the best attributes of each medium. And we’ll continue to expand our 24/7 online reporting initiative.

We’re in the midst of a complete redesign of spokesmanreview.com. We have purchased a new software system for the site. Not only will we introduce a more user-friendly design but the new technology will help us add numerous interactive features currently out of reach. We hope users will see those changes by the end of March.

Among our major initiatives this year will be a move into the world of simulcast radio/Internet programming. You’ll hear more about this exciting development in the spring.

I know the changes will not suit all readers. We’ve had some predictable and understandable reader pushback, particularly from Idaho readers. We also heard from fans of some of the reporter-written columns we dropped. We know we’ve lost some important content.

But the changes have produced one of the desired effects. As we refocus reporters on better stories, less routine coverage and more of what we call enterprise reporting, the daily paper has become more interesting. I’m beginning to hear from readers who have noticed that significant shift.

There are a couple of other less noticeable changes to mention.

Beginning this month, I will rejoin the newspaper’s editorial board, the group of editors in charge of The Spokesman-Review’s opinion pages. Some of you may remember that I took myself off the board last spring after receiving the Washington News Council’s report on our River Park Square coverage. I thought leaving the board might ease the perception among a few that the newspaper’s news and opinion functions had become too close. But the recent downsizing compels my return to the board. With two fewer staff members, the board needs another voice and occasional writer. I will continue to recuse myself, however, on political endorsements of city and county candidates and on any issue with which the S-R is inextricably linked, such as RPS.

Some may recall that we hired retired Eastern Washington University journalism professor Steve Blewett to serve as a part-time ombudsman. We contracted for five monthly columns through December. But after three columns, both parties agreed the relationship was not working. The split did not involve Blewett’s criticism, already written or planned. At issue were reporting practices. The difference of opinion could not be mended. We’re in the process of finalizing agreements with a replacement and I hope to make an announcement next week and publish the first column in early February.

Meanwhile, a yearlong project to update our code of ethics is nearing completion. A draft code prepared by a newsroom task force was distributed to the staff last week for one final review. At the conclusion of that review, in a week or two, we’ll publish the draft in the newspaper, post it online and hold public meetings in Spokane, Spokane Valley and Coeur d’Alene. Those meetings will be led by Gordon Jackson, a journalism professor at Whitworth University who has facilitated the redraft process.

After considering public comment, we’ll finalize the code and implement it. To my knowledge, no other mainstream newspaper has ever opened its ethics code process to citizens. It’s an exciting experiment, if a bit scary.

I want to thank our readers who have shown tremendous patience with the newspaper in the weeks required to implement our reorganization. As our new structure and systems begin to produce, I hope you’ll let me know what you think. I can always be reached by phone, (509) 459-5423; e-mail, steves@spokesman.com; or through my spokesmanreview.com blog, News is a Conversation.