More and more, newspapers are feeling peripheral to me — and that’s a wrenching statement for a veteran dead-tree journalist and news junkie to make.

I suppose the worm started to turn when I turned to blogging, which put me in close proximity to my laptop most hours of the day, either to write, research or listen to podcasts of local meetings. Then I added a job that involves searching the Web and rewriting stories for a variety of business and industrial readers.

The 2008 Tribune redesign also didn’t help. Newspapers will never compete with wide-screen TVs no matter how much newshole you devote to over-sized photos and graphics (what’s with that retro ’70s typeface, anyway?). They’ll just turn off the devotees who want to read the news. And once turned off, most of us will never bother to return.

Instead, we’ll flock to whatever online news source we prefer — if not many, many sources — and read, watch, listen to and comment upon our news that way.  If dinosaurs like me are doing it, there is no hope for printed newspapers. This is old news.

Question is: How quickly will the e-news format evolve and what are the costs? And I’m not referring to start-up costs (negligible) or advertising costs (negligible) or user costs (non-existent). I’m talking about the impact this new digital age will have on our understanding of the world and the independence and credibility of  whatever remains of  “the press” going forward.

I’ll be back with what I’ve learned about one exploding form — hyperlocal journalism — on Friday. It hasn’t been at all what I expected when I launced the DGreport three years ago.

“I would like to see, through council action or staff, that any member who is on the commission refrain from any sort of blogging until after this council votes on this matter,” Durkin said.

“There are certain members of this committee who have blogged, blog or have their own Web sites,” he said. “So, I’m not pointing a finger at any specific person or person, but I just ask that whatever is discussed at this stays at the level it is and not on the internet.”

This is, to my knowledge, the first time such a concern has been floated by a member of the village council. Maybe because DGreport contributor Mark Thoman was about to be appointed a member of the committee?

Thoman is surely the most active blogger on the committee, which also includes Bill White and Marge Earl of the Zoning Board of Appeals; Alan Jirik, Audra Hamerik and Gregg Beggs of the Plan Commission; Mike Davenport of the Architecture Design Review Board, John Wendt of the Traffic and Parking Commission and at-large member Paul Jacobs. Two additional at-large members are yet to be appointed following Tuesday’s vote to increase the committee.

White, of course, was the publisher of the now defunct Wired Grove blog before assuming his current roles as chairman of the ZBA, D99 school board member and, as of Tuesday, chairman of the CPC. While a regular commenter during the 2007 campaign, he has offered only a very occasional comment on the DGreport since.

Marge Earl also has commented here on limited basis, most recently to report on last month’s Community Events Commission meeting, while Mike Davenport has commented just once.

None of their comments have been strident, indiscreet or otherwise objectionable. Thoman, on the other hand, has certainly come in for some push-back for his posts. However,  he’s made it clear he is stepping back from blogging on the DGreport and focusing his attentions on the CPC.

“Mayor Sandack knows I continue to be appreciative of the opportunity to serve the village, and appreciative of his appointing me to what everyone knows to be a key undertaking of the village,” Thoman said.

While I have no problem with Durkin raising the question of blogging in conjunction with boards and commissions — in fact, I think it should be raised — I would have appreciated a larger discussion of the issue.

As it turned out, commissioners Geoff Neustadt and William Waldack were the only ones to weigh in, although Durkin said he “had communications with several colleagues and there were no objections” to his proposal.

“I think there’s a different kind of respect and professionalism that comes once on an acting board or commission, Neustadt said. “I fully expect all of our appointees to respect and follow rules of conduct for the municipal organization and that board and commission.”

It took Waldack to point out that the council was framing the question in the narrowest possible terms by focusing on blogging to the exclusion of other social media — of which local officials including the mayor, Neustadt, and commissioners Bob Barnett and Bruce Beckman make regular use.

“I know the rules apply,  we  have legal standards we have to meet and I know there’s a concern,” Waldack said. “Keep in mind it doesn’t mean no blogging, because keep in mind we have council members up here always Twittering and blogging, Facebooking and everything else .

“The standards that apply to us would probably apply to them as well. It doesn’t put a kibosh on blogs,” he said.

Waldack’s point speaks to the universality of social media. This is an era when members of Congress Twitter from the U.S. Capitol during the president’s State of the Union address, policy discussions flourish on local Facebook pages and the Village itself makes regular use of Twitter and TribLocal, and also posted an official statement on the “Bring Back the Heritage Fest” group’s Facebook page.

So where to we draw the line? At all digital media? All blogs? Or just the DGreport?

I wrote in yesterday’s Sun column about the difficulties and challenges digital media present to the dinosaurs among us — journalists, government officials and consumers of the “news.” Falling into two of those groups myself, I’m certainly sympathetic to the third.

However, at the risk of sounding self-serving, I’m going to suggest it could appear that public officials are personally motivated when they single out one tiny corner of the digital universe as off-limits and apply that criterion to a single committee.

By all means have a discussion — a far-reaching, all-inclusive discussion — of what the explosion of  blogs and other digital and social media means to government business as usual. But, please. Be fair.

Take a bow EJ, and get back to work!  Meat, let’s go boyo, fame’s a waitin’.  Too bad EJ can’t get any local elected officials to put some skin in here.

EJ didn’t want to toot her own horn.  I said “E, this is DG, everyone toots their own horn!”

Me here.  We’ve all read Elaine’s DGreport now for over two years, and recently she asked us if we might help her out for a while.

I put up the video of Ms. Richards.

And yeah, consider me a pulling blocker on all the trolls, and self-righteous scolds, and stoopid jamokes trying to wearing her out, not being mindful they’re in a neighbor’s house here.

Use a pseudonym?  Fine.   There’s plenty of people who’d like to say something but don’t want blowback from blowhard trolls, and fallout in their personal lives.  Understood.

There’s a difference between someone using a pseudonym, and a troll with an agenda and an attitude.  If you’re registered, and use your real name, your comments are worth a bit of care.  Know up front, if you choose to engage here as a known real person using your real name, I’ll work to spike any negative comments directed towards you instead of towards what you are saying.

I’m hoping I’m just the first of several who agree to try and contribute.  I tend to go wider than DG, and I’m not a career journalist like EJ.  I write about village matters, council matters mainly, infrastructure, development, TIF.  Sometimes county, sometimes state, sometimes left field.  Where EJ calls people and does interviews, I stick mostly to the public record; what’s on-line and already in agendas, minutes, documents, and on and on.  If it’s on-line I’ll try and find it.

Elaine does her here gig very well, and she’s the boss.  I do my gig…ummm, too.  All of the above?  Not hard and fast, not final, not etched in stone.  Times change, and lately they’ve been changing really fast.  EJ tries her best to keep you in the loop, and I’ll try and help too.

How about you?

Mark Thoman