Geneva Overholser has a manifesto to save journalism (PDF Available). After 37 years in the business she worried about the state of journalism and finally decided to stop lamenting and instead “began to relish some of the exciting and interesting things going on in journalism.”

What distinguishes her manifesto from other proposals I’ve heard is her focus – it’s not about saving newspapers, it’s about saving the practice of journalism — a focus more akin to my own new media heart.

The 27-page manifesto lays out nine actions journalists can take to counter the problems ahead, including how nonprofit media companies can take shape and the role of citizen journalism. At an informal meeting I attended last Friday, she characterized these action steps as “constructive paths” that journalists often overlook. Some might even scare traditional journalists, which she says often “confuse tradition with principle.” For example – Overholser wants to make the news, even traditionally “boring” news like town budget stories, interesting again.

“This is the kind of story copy editors can’t stand to read, and they are paid to read it. But serious journalists respond ‘we have always done budget stories’ … But it doesn’t matter if nobody reads them.” The question is how to do these same stories, or the long vetted investigation, which are important for democracy, to engage readers.

My NewAssignment.Net brain began churning. Answering the question on how to engage readers on investigative stories seems simple: Have them help you report on it.

While the majority of Overholser’s solutions are top-down, and missing the point according to some critics, she did graze this issue when she pointed to Minnesota Public Radio, which has “public insight journalism,” that relies on experts in their community to report on articles. Journalists comb over the contributed information and it feeds into the journalism process.

“The people we serve have this enormous body of knowledge and [Minn. Radio] is finding a thoughtful way to invite this remarkable expertise into the newsroom.,” said Overholser.

Finally, Overholser brought up the tensions between those in the old guard and those involved in this new-fangled new media. There is plenty of talk about re-tooling old media journalists to get new media skills. Entire organizations have sprung up that teach these skills, but what about teaching new media and citizen journalists the values and ethics of traditional media — such as accuracy, fairness and objectivity? This was brought up in a comment on NewAssignment.Net just last week and it’s something Overholser wants to see through.

There are certainly lessons to trade between the old and new media worlds. And Overholser’s is not the only “manifesto” on the table. Ifra has an interesting (and flashy) publishing guide for Web 2.0 newspapers that is chock full of information (worthy of its own post). Here is to hoping the practice of journalism learns to swim and not sink in the amalgamation of new ideas.

David Cohn is NewAssignment.Net’s blog editor.