I am a whiner, at least lately. And in my current situation I’ve let some of that go too far, and have stopped doing anything other than the daily grind. My frustration had to do with a good amount of resources being pulled into other areas of concentration. I became the sucking sound of the core.

I blame part of that on the tremendous opportunity presented to The Gazette during the historic June flood. The flood coverage proved, at least to me, the extraordinary value of a local news operation working through print, online and mobile channels to deliver timely, relevant and in-depth information to a local and national audience.

It was the first time I witnessed in person all the wheels of a news operation churning in this new era of journalism. It was fun, we kicked ass and we were relevant again to the local community and to a national audience who had ties to Cedar Rapids. If we lacked anything, it was more user-generated content and community involvement, both huge areas we need to be better at.

This is a time of change. Many things are happening, and do so very quickly. It’s easy to sit back and whine about it and how my way is better and so on and so on and so on. But that doesn’t do any good. I still have a job, which is good. And I still have enough will to do something. I’m not yet sure what I want to do. I know sitting back and doing nothing is wrong.

I regularly visit Alan Mutter’s Newsosaur blog. Joe Bullard recently posted there about local news coverage in the Denver area and what he would do with what may be the last franchise for our industry, local news.

I’d hate to be a newspaper editor today, but if I were. . .

Instead of spending time bemoaning how my owners are going to kill my paper, I’d make real sure that the people on my staff were covering news relevant to the communities where subscribers live.

I’d fire a third of the editors and convert another third of them to being reporters and give them a laptop. I’d send all my reporters home with a laptop. I would tell each of them his beat is now a circle with a radius of 12 blocks and the center of the circle is his house. I want to know everything that happens within those 12 blocks.

I don’t want to see you in the newsroom, unless your editor or I summon you. I will count bylines. If you don’t submit at least one story a day, I will be unhappy. If you go a week without a byline, you will be fired. I will expect you to know how to use a digital camera and I expect you to submit at least one picture a day from your circle.

The post made me think about some things going on here as we continue along the disaster recovery mode. Here, the newsroom has created a flood team to provide a more focused approach to covering the on-going recovery. The team consists of an editor, three dedicated reports, a videographer and a pool of other photographers and reporters to tap into.