My friend David Nelson [right], editor of the Kitsap Sun in Bremerton, Washington, stopped by today for a bracing discussion on what real journalists in real newsrooms are thinking and doing, and what real newspapers need from journalism schools.

Needless to say, the folks in David’s shop were jolted by the shuttering of the Seattle P-I (and, because the Sun is owned by Scripps, by the closure of the Rocky Mountain News). By many measures, tough as the environment is, there are good things going on in Bremerton – a good-looking Web site; experimentation with staff and reader video, photo, and text blogs; and, interestingly enough, more people covering Bremerton than the digital P-I has watching Seattle.

We also talked about something I had shared when visiting Rachel Davis Mersey’s graduate class in audience understanding this morning: the media business’s need to make using all this fine digital content both enjoyable and habitual. For either, or both, to happen, stopping to think about both the use case and the audience would seem to be prerequisites. [That’s what has made RedEye successful, not the tabloid format or the low cover price of free.]

Of course, working journalists right now feel so overwhelmed by the twin pressures of getting out fresh news, and getting into the use of fresh tools, that they can’t find the time to stop and think.  “And we don’t need our J-schools just to turn out people with digital skills,” David said.  “We need you to be sending us people who can help us figure it out.”

Medill is launching a new master’s track for experienced professionals this fall, with the idea that the school also can help veteran journalists build a new way of thinking.  Yes, new skills are important, but so is a new respect for the ways the audience wants to build habit. Hey, if we ourselves wouldn’t spend time using the cool new Web app we just built, are we certain our audience is different enough from us that they will?

It’s a job to be done.  We had better do it well.