Watch a Newspaper Reinvent Itself

At the new offices of The Register Citizen in this faded old mill town, there’s a sign out front welcoming residents to come in for coffee and muffins at the Newsroom Café -- sort of Starbucks meets “Lou Grant.” Mimeographed fliers reading “Public Welcome!” invite people to walk in and participate in the 4 p.m. story conference. Residents are free to stroll through the newsroom as reporters peck out stories.

“I have no idea how this is going to work,” Emily M. Olson, the managing editor, said as 10 staff members were joined by a retiree moving to Florida, a public safety commissioner, a Democratic Town Committee member, and a Wal-Mart assistant store manager and intrepid blogger, who showed up for the meeting. “It’s all new to us, but if you hear something that piques your interest, feel free to share it with us.”

Torrington, a city of 36,000 in northwestern Connecticut, pockmarked with abandoned mills, is not the first place that comes to mind as a brave outpost on the digital frontier. And The Register Citizen, with roots dating to 1874 and a print circulation that’s fallen from 21,000 in the late 1980s to 8,000 now, isn't an industry giant either. But when it moved Monday from its dilapidated 105-year-old home into a renovated factory space meant to embody a full-bore embrace of the Internet, it provided one metaphor for how journalism is trying to reinvent itself. If Torrington seems an unlikely locale, well, that’s the point.