This past week at work, I spent about one quarter of my time on Spokesman-Review website work, blogging, facebooking and tweeting. And three quarters of my time on print product work, interviewing, writing and working on stories that will appear in our newspaper this weekend and next.

It dawned on me that those who remain in modern newsrooms can look to a machine for inspiration: The Prius. With its electric motor, and gasoline motor, the engine goes back and forth between both with ease.

So we journalists need Prius brains in this transition time. The "electric motor" is our website brain. The "gasoline" motor the traditional journalism brain. The goal now it to  more seamlessly use both motors.

How does this tie into a blog on death and dying? It's a stretch, but here's what I came up with. Toward the end of my life, when I bore to death younger family members with old-time stories, I'll tell them about a time when we had to report, write and edit for two things in one: newspapers and websites. I want to mark the day here when I realized my brain had to split in two to get it done.

To which my great-grandchildren and great-great nieces and nephews may reply: What's a newspaper? What's a Prius?

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