The New York Times video obituary of Art Buchwald is the type of innovation we’re seeing more and more from newspaper companies. Newspapers continue to push innovation as the way to get out of a five-year slide in circulation and revenue. In a recent report, the Newspaper Association of America and the American Society of Newspaper Editors highlighted media companies that have embraced the type of “out of the box” thinking that they believe can lead mainstream newspapers out of the doldrums.

Their examples were chosen for innovation in collaborative journalism, storytelling and distribution, news management, and repackaging of content.

Here’s a rundown of some of the projects from the NAA and ASNE report, called “Growing Audience, Innovation in Action”:

* Las Ultimas Noticias, a newspaper in Santiago, Chile, uses its Web site to survey its online readership to determine what stories should go into the next day’s newspaper. The process is similar to Digg, the popular social news site that lets users vote to pick the best articles of the day. In the online media world this type of relationship is becoming the norm, as countless sites now use voting features to determine what gets play at the top of a site. Only LUN takes it a step further. Las Ultimas determines story play in the print publication the next day only after determining how its audience voted on stories that first appeared on the Web. This model of audience interaction is credited with driving an increase in advertising revenue, as telephone companies noticed a surge of young people reading LUN and promptly increased their ad buys. The audience’s opinion has a direct relationship with what ends up in print — but not what is covered first on the Web. It’s become a competition among readers to claim they can determine a front-page story and have sway over which stories make the front page.

* El Pais, Spain’s largest newspaper, launched EP3 a Web publication aimed at attracting the teen to 30-year-old audience. Strikingly visual, the site was created by a staff under 30 to underscore the belief that young journalists know better than anyone else what young readers want. Among other content, the site features a “Talentos” link that allows the users to produce their own content of stories, photos and videos. EP3 aims to show and prove that if media companies want to attract younger readers, they should look to young journalists to help direct content. Since its launch in June 2005, the site attracts 250,000 unique visitors a month. The NAA/ASNE report included an informal review panel of Spanish-speaking students from the Los Angeles area to gauge whether this type of Web site would attract a U.S. audience, and the answer was “yes.”

* More and more newspaper companies are pushing to have their journalists collect video for their Web sites, and none more so than The News Journal in Wilmington, Del. The Gannett newspaper, which began pushing video in 2002 now produces a newscast twice a day distributed through iTunes for video iPods. The move has helped to significantly increase Web traffic. The News Journal’s efforts give credence to the industry rallying cry that newspapers should create content and deliver it when and how customers want. The most progressive newspapers, many in small markets, are heavily into videoblogs and are producing them as a matter of routine. The Desert Sun, Gannett’s newspaper in Palm Springs, uses videoblogs to deliver alternative forms of storytelling. This week, sports reporters are producing videoblogs as part of the enhanced coverage of the Bob Hope Chrysler Classic Golf tourney. Last week, the newspaper’s videoblogs were capturing the Palm Springs Film Festival. As a result of these pushes, the question arises: “With all this going on, who’s producing for the daily print paper?” One answer is to play to the strength of the individual journalist (let a hard-nosed investigative reporter investigate and let a creative journalist experiment in alternative forms) and then create opportunities for citizen journalists to augment the trained, professional staff, whether it’s on the Web site or in print.

A good take away from the entire report: The most progressive newspaper companies think of themselves more as multi-media news and information companies that create and deliver content when, where and how consumers want it. Key to their success is creating a culture of innovation that emphasizes web-based journalism, alternative storytelling, reader engagement and specialty publications.

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Chris Lopez has been working in newsrooms since the age of 17, and over the past 28 years has covered a variety of beats from the National Football League to Denver City Hall. Most recently he worked at the Contra Costa Times.