North Tonawanda — I’m a member of the first generation to learn how to type on a computer rather than a typewriter.

I’ve seen the Internet and e-mail go from a novelty to the world’s primary mode of transferring information.

I graduated from college before Facebook swept over campuses, but I was here when it washed up on the shores of America’s social consciousness.

And yet I came along just early enough to realize how remarkable all of this is.

You won’t find many people younger than me who remember the days of saving quarters for pay phones or the fighting over who was talking too long, tying up the family’s single telephone line.

I remember relying on hardcover encyclopedias taking up an entire shelf of our family’s bookcase and actually using them to find out information and settle disputes. And while, of course, we had the nightly TV news, there weren’t a dozen 24-hour cable news channels and an infinite number of Web sites to keep us informed on the news of the day.

That’s what the daily newspaper was for.

Of course, we here at the Tonawanda News — and still many of you — believe that to be the case.

But times are changing, and so are we.

As you’ve no doubt noticed, tonawanda-news.com has undergone a major overhaul.

We have spent a great deal of time working with the new, more compact layout over the last few weeks. The result, we hope, is a site that more reflects best practices among newspaper Web sites and offers us a cleaner platform for conveying the news of the day and the messages of the advertisers who support it.

Gone is a clunky flash display. In its place you’ll see a much more informational “top stories” tab that offers both visual and textual information on the best news, sports and feature stories of the day.

Dueling unwieldy section bars across the top of the page have been replaced by a sleek column to your left, complete with fancy flyout subsections that better organizes our content.

Thanks to that more economical use of space, we have improved on the number of opportunities advertisers can purchase, which had proved a major obstacle with our old site.

Technology being less than perfect, I’m sure there will be a few bugs and glitches in the days to come. If you notice any broken links or other problems, please e-mail me and we’ll try to get to the bottom of it.

This new site offers us the ability to be more flexible than our old one, but with that added flexibility comes a bunch of new bells and whistles, the true impact of which we’re still learning how best to utilize.

I would be remiss without crediting James Neiss, a photographer for our newspaper group who has taken the lead on the new Web site, spending countless hours tinkering, experimenting and then teaching the rest of us how to make it all work. It’s the innovative work of journalists like Jim that demonstrates the commitment of our profession to embracing new technology — with its payoffs and its pitfalls — in order to keep bringing you the news.

Newspapers can’t hide from the Internet. That genie won’t be going back into the bottle anytime soon, and while the Web is the driving force behind a paradigm shift that has cost our industry, among others, a tremendous amount of money, it is still a force for improvement.

Yes, newspapers made a ton more money — and employed a ton more journalists who generated a ton more news — before the Internet came along. But at the same time, especially for small community newspapers like this one, we were limited by the constraints of geography in the amplification of our message.

Newspapers have yet to find secure footing in a world where the product we sell, information, is both highly valued and mostly free.

But while there are fewer people buying the Tonawanda News the old fashioned way, thanks to the Internet there are many, many more who are reading it. If you’re not one of those people — former Tonawanda residents who’ve moved away comprise a huge portion of our online readership — you probably know someone who is.

If you add any newspaper’s online readership to its declining subscription base, it becomes clear that we’re not actually losing readers. We’re gaining them and presently have more than at any time in the industry’s history. From that, I draw a simple economic conclusion: The demand is there.

The best formula for capitalizing on that has yet to be found, but as long as there’s the demand, there will be someone to supply it.

As the editor of a newspaper, and an old-school newspaper reader who still prefers the warm rustle of a turning page to the sterile click of a mouse, I’d be lying if I said that doesn’t scare me.

But what offers some comfort is this simple truism: Newspapers, like any business, must face the choice of adapting to these changing times or simply going away.

And thanks to the Internet, we’re not going anywhere anytime soon.

Eric DuVall is the managing editor of the Tonawanda News. Contact him at eric.duvall@tonawanda-news.com.