Can you be a little bit pregnant online?

Going to the Society of Editors Conference in Glasgow - under the rubric 'HAVE WE GOT GOOD NEWS FOR YOU' - is a bit like visiting a maiden aunt whilst half pregnant and pretending to be a virgin.

The herd of elephants in the ballroom of the refurbished Central Hotel was the internet. Few of the newspaper editors present had yet fully worked out how dead trees and ink related to cyberspace, and vice versa.

For many, the internet was a johnny-come-lately, an add-on to their print product, and one which cannibalised it and produced very little revenue in return. Others seemed to embrace it very, very tentatively.

A simple illustration: in the ballroom, only the trade press hacks were using laptops to blog and keep abreast of the conference and the world outside. For most others, pen and paper sufficed.

The editors all know their sales figures are surely but swiftly going down; their advertising - especially classifieds and property - has migrated permanently to the internet. But they do not know how to integrate the net into their central offer. That was - and is - the crunch question.

The paywall came in for examination, but without News International to defend its corner and its recently released, distributed and hotly disputed figures. 'Prince Hal' (James Murdoch) was elsewhere.

Most papers are not in a position to erect a paywall, though micropayments proved to have some attractions. So too did holding back the exclusives. One local editor to whom I spoke had just issued an edict that no exclusives were to be put online before printing. No web first for him.

Others, like the Manchester Evening News, had used the web as a new way to connect to, and to drill down and find, new audiences in local areas and local interest groups. They had, for example, allowed Manchester City Football Club fans to open up the site to blue rather than the normal red - Manchester United's colour - as background. Simple but effective.

The one true light at the end of the dark tunnel was Martin Clarke, publisher of the super soaraway Mail Online (below), Britain's most-read. He told his designers to make it look like the Mail - and he's made it work, with plenty of content and celebrities.

At least he realised it was a new and exciting platform and said he was making it pay its way. Too many of the others are sulking, and blaming the BBC for being first in the cyber-room. What they forget is that DG John Birt had great foresight (words I never thought I would write), saw the possibilities of the net and invested in it.

The local and regional British papers were too busy living off the fat of the classified land and 35% annual profit margins to think ahead. Now they are caught out. Their audiences want better and faster news, whenever, wherever, on whatever platform. They have to try to find their readers rather than vice versa.

Glasgow was bereft of the digital maniacs who inhabit the likes of newsrewired. It missed their zeal and creativity, if not their swivelling eyes and proselytising.

The internet is the great media disruptor of our time. You go with it, think far ahead and creatively, and find the audience wherever, whenever you can. Content is still king. You cannot ignore it.

Carnage in print newspapers is coming. But without embracing the net wholeheartedly, it will be sooner and swifter.

Sorry Great Aunt Gertrude, but it's not possible to be half pregnant on this one.