A weekend with other newspaper folks may seem like a downer these days. News outlets of all kinds — including newspapers — are telling us about the woes of the industry.

But there are some good minds working to overcome the challenges we face. And the group of editors and publishers I spent the weekend with were full of optimism that newspapers will come out of the current economic troubles better for the experience.

Across eastern North Carolina, newspapers are cutting back on staff, reducing the size of their newspapers and learning how to work more efficiently.

And for newspapers big and small, the opportunities are the same. In every town represented at last week’s Eastern N.C. Press

Association meeting, the local newspaper represented the largest single news and information gathering organization in the community.

Despite the economic challenges, newspapers remain the best outlet for regular citizens to learn about their community.

Whether the interest is in local government, ball scores, school news or honor rolls, the local newspapers are where residents find all that information.

The opportunity newspapers have, as keynote speaker Gene Price told us, is to tell the stories that otherwise wouldn’t get told. Price, the former editor of the Goldsboro News-Argus and the father of North Carolina AP Bureau Chief Sue Price Johnson, recounted the story of a news brief he edited while he worked in Goldsboro.

The brief was about the body of a homeless man found under a building.

Price dug a little deeper and learned the man was a decorated war veteran who never regained his footing after he returned from war.

In a follow up to the brief, Price was able to let his readers know about a life wrecked by war and paint a more vivid picture of the death of an otherwise anonymous homeless man.

He told those of us gathered at Atlantic Beach that we must be sure to tell the stories like the one about the derelict. But we must also learn to tell the stories with “simplicity.”

Price’s remarks were as eloquent as he wants us to be in our writing. It’s a standard worth reaching for no matter the size of your newspaper, no matter how many people are writing the stories in your newspaper.

On the business side, newspaper publishers are examining all kinds of ideas for dealing with the realities of the new economy. Some are beginning to charge for access to their Web sites.

Others are planning to move from a broadsheet-size newspaper, like this one, to a tab-size, which will save money on printing expenses.

Still others are working hard to keep subscribers and add new ones with a host of incentives and telemarketing efforts.

At the end of the day, though, it seems as though many newspapers are counting on readers and advertisers to see the value of their local newspaper.

And it is a good value. For 50 or 75 cents, you get a lot of man hours thrown in your driveway or in your mailbox each day or each week.

As circulation declines slowly among newspapers of all sizes, readership is up, when you count visitors to newspaper Web sites. More people want more information now than they ever have before. Publishers and editors I visited with last weekend are still bullish on newspapers’ ability to deliver what people want.