On the eve of Barack Obama’s inauguration, I just finished “John Adams,” by David McCullough.

I know, I’m behind on my reading. Everyone else watched the movie last year, and read the book years ago. But it’s not unusual for me to miss a trend.

Adams was the first U.S. president to live in the White House. He moved into the  not-quite-finished presidential palace - his words - in November of 1800, shortly before finishing his one term as president.

In a letter to his wife the morning after his first night in the White House, Adams wrote: “I pray heaven to bestow the best of blessings on this house and all that shall hereafter inhabit. May none but honest and wise men ever rule under this roof.”

Adams and his wife also noted, with much sadness and frustration, that many of the workers finishing the White House were black slaves.

The message from the past is poignant. The White House’s first resident offered an eloquent prayer for his successors - while black slaves worked to finish the house.

Tomorrow, a black man will move into the White House.

How is that for cool.

Franklin Roosevelt liked the Adams quote about the White House so much he had it lettered in gold over the fireplace in the White House dining room.

On a related subject, a year ago I read Team of Rivals, the great book by Doris Kearns Goodwin on Abraham Lincoln’s presidency. It chronicled how Lincoln chose his political rivals for his cabinet instead of sticking with safe friends and colleagues who agreed with him.

It’s not coincidence that Barack Obama gave his Sunday night speech standing in front of the Lincoln monument. Newspapers and television stations across the country showed that image - the new black president standing in front of the president who emancipated the slaves.

Obama’s selection of Hilary Clinton as his secretary of state and Robert Gates as secretary of defense, among others, are examples of his own willingness to stretch out of his comfort zone to make the right choices.

Of course, it’s too early to put Mr. Obama in the same category as Lincoln or even Adams. He is taking office during dire times - much like 1860 and 1796 were trying times for our country.

But the proof will be in how he copes with the unreasonable expectations and intractable problems. Whether he manages to remain committed to changing how decisions are made in Washington, realizing the promise of the campaign rhetoric about hope for a new kind of America.

The Chicago Tribune, one of America’s greatest and most troubled newspapers, launched an experiment today that make sense.

It may be too little, too late. And it may not address the digital future.

But the Tribune’s move to a tabloid size for its street sale edition is a smart move from a reader’s perspective.

The digital future is upon us, and many people rushing to and from work are getting their news on cell phones. But many commuters in cities like Chicago still want to grab a newspaper to read on the train/bus. And the tabloid size simply is easier to read on the go.

Check it out here. Of course, it’s easy to look good on the eve of an historic event like tomorrow’s inauguration. Just run a big picture of Barack Obama.

But if the Trib’s design staff continues to create a compelling tab cover, combined with the news staff’s reputation for quality journalism, their single copy sales are likely to increase. And that’s the point.

The Tribune, which is in bankruptcy following the crazy escapades of owner Sam Zell, needs a few successes under its belt.

In recent days I’ve run across two brilliantly written essays on the plight of Detroit - one dark and brooding and one bright and uplifting (with a little darkness, too).

Both are long, but also worth the time it takes to read them. They give you a depressingly real view of how bad things are in our state’s main city. But while one starts and ends with how awful it is, the other manages to make you laugh and give you a little hope.

Matt Labash, in a piece written for The Weekly Standard, follows an interesting cast of down-and-out Detroiters around for awhile, telling their stories.

Mitch Albom, of Detroit Free Press fame, took a similar approach but turned it around and made you proud to be a Detroiter, or at least a resident of a nearby Michigan city.

I don’t like everything Mitch Albom does, but I liked this piece. It shows some of the stubborn courage that makes Detroit, well, Detroit.

 Together, the two essays give you a feeling for how bad it is, and how that doesn’t mean it’s hopeless.

I was dismayed when I first read about the Detroit newspapers’ plans to halt home delivery four days a week.

What kind of a strategy is that? Why would they cut off their most loyal customers - the people who are willing to pay for the paper seven days a week? It doesn’t make sense.

Now, nearly a month later and after some time to think, I can see the wisdom in the move, although I feel sorry for the people of Detroit who are, in effect, the guinea pigs.

As a newspaper editor and/or publisher for most of the last 30 years, I’ve been involved in the ongoing debate over how to save newspapers in the age of the Internet. I’m on the side that thinks it’s possible - perhaps critical to our democratic society - but only with dramatic changes that the newspaper industry has been slow to embrace.

So, here’s what I think is happening in Detroit. I worked for the Gannett Co., which owns the Detroit Free Press, for 25 years. I was a publisher for five of those, attending some of the meetings of the corporate execs who make the big bucks to make the big decisions.

If they are anything, Gannett executives are smart and tough. And they’re willing to do whatever it takes to survive and thrive in the evolving world of Internet dominated media.

They’ve wisely invested in many Web-based initiatives, trying to put their company in a position to succeed.

But part of the problem is that nobody knows what the solution will be. The newspapers industry has boomed for nearly a century using a business model based on subscriptions driving retail and classified revenue. That model is falling apart and no new model has emerged to replace it.

As the revenue slide has escalated, especially in big cities like Detroit, Gannett is getting desperate. Desperate times call for desperate measures

The Christian Science Monitor announced last fall that beginning in April it will drop its daily newspaper and switch to a 24/7 news Web site and a weekly printed news magazine.

It’s a grand experiment that will either propel the Monitor into the new age, or kill it.

Most major daily newspapers aren’t ready yet to take that chance. But Gannett owns 85 daily newspapers, including Port Huron, Battle Creek, Lansing and the Observer & Eccentric and Daily Press and Argus papers in the northwest Detroit suburbs.

It can afford to pick one newspaper and risk its future with an experiment that probably won’t work … but then, nothing else seems to be working, so what the heck.

And if you’re going to pick one city for such an experiment, Detroit seems to be a likely candidate. Its economy is in the worst shape, its  prospects for emerging from the recession are among the worst in the nation, and its football team just lost 16 games.

I think turning your back on your customer base is a mistake. I think the Detroit News (owned by MediaNews Group in a joint operating agreement with Gannett’s Free Press) will fail within a year, and the Free Press will have a slight resurgence when it’s the only game in town. I think Gannett will throw out this experiment and return to seven-day home delivery within two years.

But, of course, I don’t really know any more than anyone else about how the future of newspapers will play out - in Detroit or anywhere else. Predictions are cheap. I don’t know who will win the Super Bowl, either.

The Detroit newspapers may have found just the right model for the future, cutting costs (newsprint is expensive and so is paying someone to deliver the paper) so you can save your franchise.

What I do believe with certainty, however, is that people still have an appetite for news. Some want it delivered to their door step, some want to sit on their sofa at 6 p.m., and some want it 24/7 on the Internet.

Smart news organizations will find a way to give it to them any way they want it.

And if they do it well, the financial model(s) will emerge.

Voices from the past have a way of clarifying the future.

I’ve been thinking for weeks about what to say in reaction to the Detroit newspapers’ announcement that they’re suspending home delivery  except Thursdays, Fridays and Sundays.

Then today I ran across a name from the past, which led me down a thought process that seems to be helping - at least helping me think.

The Nieman Reports, the work of the Nieman Foundation at Harvard, recently came out with a new look at the future of journalism. It’s fascinating and thoughtful and sheds little light on the future - just what you would expect.

I noticed that one of the writers’ names  - Steven A. Smith - was familiar, but I couldn’t place from where. So I followed the link to his blog, “Still a Newspaperman,” and the memories came flooding back.

Steve Smith studied journalism at the University of Oregon at the same time that I was at Oregon State University. That makes us enemies, you understand. Kind of like Spartans and Wolverines. He was a Duck; I was a Beaver.

If I recall correctly, which is unlikely, since it’s a long time ago, we both worked for our respective student newspapers, and we both also wrote as correspondents or part-timers for The Oregonian, the state’s big newspaper. We were rivals of sorts. 

Ironically, we both also retired from the newspaper business last year. I had some fun commenting on his blog, noting that irony.

But more valuable for me was reading a post on his blog, written just as he left his job as editor of the Spokane, Wash., Spokesman-Review.  It was titled, “Still a Newspaperman,” and offered a colorful description of typical journalists of the last century, with more than a little remorse that they seem to be a dying breed.

In my response, I offered to share a toast to the journalist of the past. But I also included my fervent hope that we’ll be able to pass on to the new generation of  journalists emerging in the Internet age the best of the skills and principles that motivated yesterday’s newspapermen.

 What’s that have to do with the Detroit newspapers, which are shedding those old-time journalists at an alarming rate, right along with all the other mid- and big-city newspapers across the country?

Stay tuned for a future post. Steve Smith’s voice from the past pushed me off the fence. Now I know what I want to say - I just need another day or two to let it ferment.