Most reporters and editors prefer to concentrate on getting out the news. As long as paychecks are adequate and editorial budgets relatively robust, they leave finances to the business people and assume that print journalism will survive.

But few news publications have escaped severe cost cuts in recent years. Publishers, hard-pressed to keep profits up to the point that stockholders will stick around, have been shrinking the amount of money that goes to newsrooms.

To compound the problem, when newspapers launch a Web site, the funds are likely to come out of the print side's editorial budget. And if publishers lose classified advertising revenue to the Internet, as is already the case in markets such as Dallas and Los Angeles, the cost cuts on the editorial side will go deeper. At some major publications, staffers argue that cutbacks have seriously compromised quality journalism. Travel restrictions, hiring freezes on reporters and cutbacks in the quality and number of editors all take a toll.

Understandably, some print people see new media and their own newspaper Web sites as the enemy, cost centers that siphon off funds badly needed to produce the daily news report.

But the blame has to go with near-sighted publishers who are incapable of launching new media startups. Instead of being bold and spinning off their editorial products into separate online ventures, instead of taking a risk, publishers are, as an industry, playing it safe.

And safe in this case is sorry.

If they continue down this road, newspaper publishers will cede the communications business to Net-native publishers. They will miss the coming revolution in broadband and wireless digital technologies. They will not be part of exciting extensions of their core business, such as the creation of virtual communities, virtual malls and auction houses or partnerships in distance learning projects.

It's a sad sight -- watching newspapers stand by as digital technology explodes, capital shifts to new media ventures and the world awakens to this powerful tool for communication and trade.

Broadcasters, by contrast, appear more at home in a multimedia Web environment. But also with a few exceptions, such as NBC, ABC, ESPN and CNN, they seem almost as unwilling as their print cousins to make a major move to create new businesses. And broadcast news staffs are not the ones society can count on anymore to cover politics or state and local government, to be at school board and special district meetings, to dig out the public documents, lay out the police logs and spot the hot cases in court.

It will take years for new media publications to figure out how to generate that kind of content. At best, they can handle segmented topics, like technology or sports, but civic journalism is terra incognita. They don't understand the nitty-gritty of daily news any more than traditional media people know how to exploit cyberspace.

The public may become caught in the worst of both worlds: new media that covers news superficially and newspapers with eviscerated newsrooms that can no longer produce quality news. The answer to this quandary is for newspaper executives to stop figuring out "where the new medium is going" and make a genuine attempt to embrace the Internet. They need to spin off their stronger editorial and service products into separate online ventures and think creatively about how to make a buck on the Net.

Newspapers and broadcasters have tremendous assets. The time has come to leverage them, borrow against them and bet on the future. Further stalling will make newspaper reporters and editors, and the brand of journalism they stand for, an endangered species.