Gilbert Bailon is the Editorial page editor at the St.Louis Post-Dispatch and the President of the American Society of Newspaper Editors.

A YEAR AGO, I EMBRACED the theme of “Transforming Leaders” as I became ASNE president.

What a year of transformation. The depth and pace of change has outstripped what most informed decision-makers in our business foresaw last spring.

A speed boat of change has become a careening roller coaster. The breathtaking dips and blind curves seem to arrive faster than anticipated.

Last April, a few newspaper companies were poised for auction or undergoing major consolidation. Then a challenged economy took a steep nose dive as 2008 began, constricting revenue tightened even beyond cautious levels that most companies had projected.

The decline hastened rapidly, as did reactions to offset the revenue and circulation gaps.

I’ve talked to hundreds of journalists as I crisscrossed the country, listening to concerns among top editors as well as among college students hoping to nail down their first internships.

Those chats often were punctuated with words such as doubtful, jaded, fed up, weary, punch-drunk and cynical. And that’s just among the top editors.

If we sometimes harbor such feelings, what must be the mental fragility among those in the trenches producing journalism every day?

Virtually every editor talked about personal and professional soul searching: “What is our future, and do I want to be part it? What would finally push me over the edge?”

It was sobering because many were respected colleagues or friends whom I have admired for years.

Top-ranking editors have morphed into life coaches and career-guidance counselors, all while shepherding journalism for our companies. Sometimes it feels like we’re administering triage in lieu of stewardship.

All is lost? Hardly – which is a message that we cannot repeat loudly and often enough.

The economic vise squeezing the newspaper industry must inspire our leadership without Pollyanna-ish pipe dreams and platitudes.

Stick your neck out, plow some uncharted paths and take some calculated chances.

Let’s not give fodder to naysayers who disregard newspaper editors as change-averse troglodytes and nostalgic dinosaurs pining for the past.

We’re in the test of our lifetimes. We must not allow ourselves to be marginalized as obstacles.

Journalism will ride it out through these turbulent times, as it has in previous decades during war-time economies or cyclical peaks and valleys.

But the new landscape must spawn an eye-opening realization. The halcyon days in which printed newspapers dominated with highly profitable classified advertising in employment, real estate and automotive are history. Finito.

Dollars in those categories will never return to past levels, nor will circulation return to past levels for the printed edition. Audiences will continue to grow, but chiefly through online and niche products.

We will continue to live in an information-driven society and economy. Information to feed a democratic society will not diminish because revenue has stalled and newsprint costs are rising.

We’ve begun the transition from newspaper companies to media/information companies, yet so much more awaits.

We editors must control what we can – our attitudes and quality journalism, both of which still matter.

It is disorienting and wrenching to watch the exit of so many talented journalists. But we must collect our wits to provide context and perspective – just as we would demand with a good in-depth series.