A few tips for keeping your secrets to yourself: 1) Don't put out newspaper ads inviting the public to a community forum, and 2) Don't let reporters attend, identify themselves, ask questions, and (with your permission) record the session.

And if you screw up, 3) Don't make it worse by ignoring a classic rule of journalism: claiming that something's off the record after the fact.

It is very bad to wait till the end of a two-hour marathon before taking a columnist aside and saying -- just to him -- that, "Of course, everything tonight is off the record." With that, you've graduated from the stupid to the unethical.

Now here's the disheartening part: I got this demand for silence from a top editor of The Philadelphia Inquirer. It came after a bunch of editors had met with readers who had answered an ad to be part of a recent forum about the future of their newspaper.

Like most big-city newspapers, the Inquirer's future is uncertain. It's profitable, but not enough. As a paper product, it's a wasteful behemoth, an ecological mess. And its content is available, everywhere, for free.

Everyone in that conference room, editors and readers alike, had come to help this newspaper survive the digital age. But in what form? readers asked, to which they got no clear answer.

"What are you?" the Inquirer editors were asked in various ways, to which they variously responded: "Best regional newspaper. Most comprehensive. The paper of record. The only newspaper you need to pick up." But we also found out that these newspaper editors now track page views of stories online -- like TV execs checking ratings.

"If a newspaper is like a cable channel, with different sections for different readers, how is it better?" asked one woman. No response. These readers had come to talk about big issues. But that was radically different from what the editors seemed ready, willing or able to speak about.

Before the meeting began, Inky editor Amanda Bennett ducked into the conference room for a minute. She asked us to write her (well, here you are), and told us not to hold back. Little chance of that. Among our assortment were several veteran letter-writers, a couple of graduate-school journalists, and a clutch of PR professionals from the burbs.

These readers were ready to talk about the Inquirer's coverage, especially of the city. To talk about fairness, fullness and especially how the paper could survive the digital age.

But what we got instead were a series of slides depicting gruesome photos and provocative headlines. And samples of several "new" forms of news presentation -- though nothing you haven't seen in a weekly, a magazine or in USA Today.

"Does this offend you?" came the question about a photo of a man being hanged in Iraq. No, came the reply. We need to see these things. "How about this?" about a photo of a dead athlete. "Offensive?" No, not unless it's unrelated to the story. How about this spread of bios and pics of pederast priests? Not offensive. Important.

The editors said they'd gotten a lot of heat over all of these. They needed to come up with photos and headlines powerful enough to get us to pick up the paper, but which didn't upset us. Oh, and by the way, is this new deadline-headline size too small? Is it in the right place? Fine, fine, came the responses.

But what did raise these readers' hackles were the headlines that were overblown, demeaning or simply inaccurate. "Who needs you to do this if we've already got this on TV?" someone asked. I heard little response from the editors.

The editors also tried out a snappy new layout called "Inquirer Express"-- a spread of the paper's highlights, "powered" by Verizon. "Would you read this?" Maybe. Though one woman, noticing the Verizon logo at the top, asked if their sponsorship would make it tougher to report on the company. No, came the reply. She looked unconvinced; another joked that they could call it "Inquirer Lite."

For these editors, brevity seemed everything. The average reader, one editor told us, spends just nine minutes with the paper. "People are rushed," agreed one woman, "but if it's well-written, it's worth the time."

"We have to deal with the reality of paper," cautioned an editor. "It's not like we're online," he said, underscoring a theme that haunted the evening. Throughout, the editor seemed to meet the onslaught of the online by worrying about type sizes or whether they've offended someone. It made me wonder if these journalists had already become slaves to page views.

To date, the Inquirer has held about a dozen such community forums, and plans more. On my way out -- before being asked for my silence -- one editor said he hoped I'd come back. I will, if they let me.

I hope even that the region's paper of record will put these discussions on the record. Because it's hard to save a powerful instrument of democracy with secret meetings.