Get The Ink Out:

My friend Sam, known as the Guinea pigs’ dad in my household, once asked me where I thought the newspaper business is going and how the Web played into it all.

My answer was that the Internet is definitely where we need to be (and should have been years ago), but that small community papers like the Daily Pilot won’t be disappearing any time soon.

There’s just something about cutting out an article to mail to Grandma so she can place it on her fridge for bragging rights. There’s just something about the feel of paper that you can’t re-create on any touch-screen device. There’s just something about the warmth and memory you can get from newsprint on a scrapbook page. Yep, community newspapers are here to stay.

That all said, I’m happy and really excited to announce I’m being promoted to web editor, effective May 16, which, yes, is a Sunday. Technically, my first day will be May 17, but who’s counting?

Jamie Wetherbe, the web editor for L.A. Times Community News, and I have discussed some ideas for how our sites should look and function. I want a button so people can Tweet and e-mail articles. I want more visuals, like videos and photo galleries. I want to make it easier for readers to upload their vacation and paparazzi shots.

But what I really want is to hear from you. What would you like to see more of? Less of? What works for you? What doesn’t?

We have some great ideas for our Facebook pages as well.

I know quite a few of our readers anxiously await the day their vacation photos will run in the paper. While I’d never want to remove that feature from print, I think it would be just as neat to have a featured family vacation shot on our Facebook page.

It won’t be smooth sailing at first. I’m of the mind set that we’ll try whatever seems right. If a new feature or idea doesn’t work, we’ll throw it out and try something else. It it’s a big hit and everyone loves it, it stays.

One thing I’m looking forward to is having a dedicated editor who can get stuff online in a timely manner. Not to say we haven’t been doing a good job so far, but it keeps our city editors from focusing on giving readers the best print product possible.

With a dedicated web editor, no longer will readers have to figure out who to call about online problems. Is a story not showing up correctly? I’ll fix it. Is a photo caption incorrect? I’ll fix it. Did you get sucked into the computer and are now forced to ride Light Cycles in a game of life or death? OK, I can’t actually fix that, but I’ll root for you to win.

Now is the time for us at the Daily Pilot, and our sister papers, the Huntington Beach Independent and Laguna Beach Coastline Pilot, to spread our online wings and see just how far we can go.

JAMIE ROWE is a copy editor for the Daily Pilot. She may be reached at (714) 966-4634 or jamie.rowe@latimes.com. Squee says he would be rather happy if his eye infection would just kindly go away along with the pesky medicine Mom puts in his eye.