About two decades ago, I was a grateful 20-something glad I had escaped Raleigh with a degree. N.C State taxed my abilities in ways I had never imagined were possible. I determined then and there that I would never darken another classroom the rest of my life — at least not as a student.

But as I write this column, I’m sitting in the Freedom Forum Room in Carroll Hall on the campus of the University of North Carolina. I haven’t been here today as a student, but I have learned a lot, I can promise you.

As journalists, even if we didn’t attend UNC as college students, there is a great link to the University of North Carolina. Dr. Jean Folkerts, the dean of the university’s School of Journalism and Mass Communication, has been a big believer in the idea that the journalism students in her charge are better served if there is a healthy relationship between the university and working journalists.

Folkerts and the members of her faculty have embodied that notion in many ways, including a growing relationship with the North Carolina Press Association – the trade group for North Carolina newspapers.

For several years now – since before Folkerts arrived at UNC to be honest – the university has hosted a couple hundred working journalists for a one-day session called the Newspaper Academy. It has given newspaper folks an opportunity to refresh some of the concepts they learned as students or in their first years on the job.

Folkerts has a unique front-row seat to study many of the changes taking place in our industry.

Her students are learning to marry traditional newspaper stories with multimedia presentations, something newspapers, including this one, are turning to more regularly as a way to deliver information.

And that leads me to another interesting topic. I got a handful of e-mails from readers last week disappointed that we didn’t have coverage of the Nov. 4 elections in our Nov. 5 edition.

I won’t bore you with the nitty-gritty details of why we didn’t except to say that we print your paper on Monday night, a full 24 hours before the election results were known.

And so, we turned to our Web site for coverage of the elections. That technology actually allowed us to provide you, the reader, with more immediate news about the election results than any print newspaper could provide.

Because we knew that our Nov. 5 paper would not include election results, we included a note at the very top of the front page letting readers know we would post those results online on Election Night.

And because we have a print product and an online presence, we can offer coverage in more than one way.

For those of you who read our election stories online last week, you’ll notice a distinct difference in our coverage in this week’s print edition. In the newspaper you’re holding right now, we are able to give you context and analysis that you couldn’t get in the heat of all the vote counting.

Still, the e-mails, and reports I get from other friends in the newspaper industry, give me reason to believe that the future of newspapers is bright.

I’m glad our readers were looking for election coverage in our newspaper. Folks at other newspapers reported having to print additional copies to keep up with the demands of readers who wanted to read about the elections.

In fact the Associated Press pushed a story on the wires that examined the demand for newspapers following the election.

And that’s what makes your newspaper an important part of your daily or weekly life. Regardless of the economy or any other difficult experience our community may be dealing with at a given moment, the newspaper will continue to be a reliable source of information, especially when people need it the most.

That’s an important point to remember as people prophecy the end of the newspaper industry.