Before reporter Scott Thomas Anderson and I departed for the Better Newspapers Contest awards luncheon in Universal City, I warned the staff that I would return either miserable or insufferable. Miserable if I came in second in the column writing category for which I was nominated, insufferable if I actually won.

Scott was nominated for his dramatic feature on local bull rider Matt Loftis, and had already received a certificate of achievement for unraveling the dark legend behind the haunting of Ione's Preston Castle.

On Oct. 25, the California Newspaper Publishers Association made its selections: I returned miserable; Scott came back insufferable.

"You know what Tiger Woods says about second place, don't you?" asked reporter Jerry Budrick.

"Huh?"

"Second sucks."

It kind of does.

Joking aside, last month's press summit was an odd snapshot of where the newspaper industry is and where it's headed. Given the theme, "Embracing Radical Change," the three-day gathering at the swank Sheraton Universal Hotel drew representatives from hundreds of newspapers of all sizes and throughout all parts of the state. It was strange sitting at a table with journalists from large dailys like the San Jose Mercury News and smaller weeklies from Santa Cruz and Novato.

Despite being there to dine on vegetable souffle and pick up varnished wood plaques, the mood at our table was decidedly glum. The Santa Cruz contingent made sardonic quips about their publication surviving another year. A Novato photojournalist paid her own way to the luncheon after she and most of her colleagues left a weekly that was suddenly under new ownership. The San Jose staffer remained poker-faced as her paper racked up the awards, having revealed earlier that she had just survived a fifth round of company layoffs.

Our paper, too, had suffered staff cuts and wage freezes, and in the coming weeks would be confronted with a looming 4 percent wage reduction. That's a bittersweet postscript in a year in which the staff was also acknowledged with a number of blue ribbons in general excellence, freedom of information, public service, investigative and environmental categories.

During the luncheon, it wasn't difficult to see why our industry was in such ambivalent turmoil. Employing graphics that appeared as if they were lifted from a 1991 Super Soaker commercial, our hosts unveiled a public access-worthy slideshow of the year's best work in California journalism, set to the punishing aggro-riffs of meathead rockers Godsmack. (I'd like to pause here momentarily to inform you that I had to download no fewer than a dozen snippets of crappy songs named "Bring It On" to find the right one to reference in this column. The things I do for my craft.)

So, in effect, a summit meant to represent our industry's embrace of innovation would have seemed revolutionary 20 years ago. In 2008 - 19 years after the Super Soaker premiered, 15 years since the word "radical" was used unironically and two years since Godsmack's last album (nine years since they were popular) - not so much. Inexplicably, "Bring It On" was a sub-theme of the summit. And judging by the sea of curled foreheads in the banquet hall, my colleagues appeared similarly confused about what they were supposed to bring - their detached objectivity, perhaps?

It wasn't all bad, though. Sacramento Bee reporter Marji Lundstrom collected a well-deserved freedom of information award for her uncovering of severe institutional problems at Sacramento County's Child Protective Services, and hundreds of newspapers were honored for the kind of work only they can do - nuanced, in-depth and status quo-changing.

That's exactly the kind of work that has already begun disappearing as the newspaper industry self-immolates. The thing is, we were struggling even before the economy went nuclear because of the industry's inability to change and its unwillingness to take financial risks.

I'm optimistic that owners will one day realize a newspaper and its Web site should be complementary entities that work in concert with each other, which isn't done by producing the same content in two places and giving it away for free in one of them. And next year, when the next editor of the Ledger Dispatch is at a banquet table making snide remarks about a fusty, tin-eared BNC presentation, I'm hopeful that "radical change" has finally, unironically been embraced.