When you talk about digital-first newsrooms, one of the first names that’ll come up is Steve Buttry’s.

Buttry is currently the director of community engagement and social media for Digital First Media newsroom at the Journal Register Company, which has daily and weekly newspapers in nearly 1,000 communities in 10 states.

“Clearly there’s a demand for a newspaper, but I don’t think there’s a demand for a company that’s focused on newspapers,” Buttry said, when asked about the future of journalism. “So we’re going to be a company focused on digital, and for the time being we’ll put out a newspaper too. That’s a complete change in your culture, your workflow, your thinking that we’re trying to bring about to our companies.”

That process is not without its challenges. Recently, Digital First Media’s CEO John Paton announced the Journal Register was filing Chapter 11 bankruptcy with the intent to seek a quick sale.

The announcement triggered a wave of “I-told-you-so’s” from digital doubters and concern from new media proponents.

Buttry remains upbeat about the future of Digital First Media.

“It doesn’t change the strategy and, in fact, I think we will see, after we come out of bankrupcy, that we’re very close to having the sort of operation we need to move forward,” he told It’s All Journalism. “It’s one of those ugly business necessities to get where we need to go.”

In response to the haters, Buttry added: “I hope that after we come out of the bankrupcy and have financial success that they’ll note that we were right and they were wrong.”

Buttry is also the former director of community engagement for TBD.com, a news site covering Washington, D.C. He’s been in the news business for about four decades.

He’s been a reporter, editor and writing coach for the Des Moines Register, Kansas City Star and Times, Minot Daily News and Omaha World-Herald. In 2010, Editor and Publisher magazine named him Editor of the Year for his work with the Cedar Rapids Gazette.

Buttry also blogs about media issues at The Buttry Diary.

The Online News Association’s annual conference has been a mirror to the shifts and tremors of the journalism industry meeting the Internet. In 2002, the few hundred people who attended the conference learned about transforming the newsroom with “really cool Flash applications,” said ONA 2012 co-chair Anthony Moor.

That interest in newsroom transformation is still a topic of discussion, but it’s become a subset of a much broader discussion about the journalism industry, Moor said.

This year’s conference in San Francisco (Sept. 20-22) will include product showcases, new technological tools, journalism start-ups and — the focus this year — storytelling.

It’s a return to the basics that Moor and cochair Pam Maples say show the desire among people to maintain the integrity of journalism, regardless of how that information is being shared.

“I actually think we’re just getting into the really exciting part of this disruption of our business,” Maples said. “It’s absolutely still scary for a lot of journalists and there’s a lot of legitimate concern about where we go and how we sustain it and the financial questions. But I think we’re deep enough in it where we’re starting to see stuff come out that’s really focused on preserving some of those core values but doing it for this modern age.”

About the guests:

(Photo courtesy of ONA)

Pam Maples is the innovation director at the John S. Knight Journalism Fellowships at Stanford University.

Previously, she was managing editor at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, where she led the integration of print and digital. Under her leadership, the publication was a finalist for the 2009 Pulitzer Prize. Maples was also assistant managing editor at the Dallas Morning News, where she had won a Pulitzer as  team for international reporting.

(Photo courtesy of ONA)

Anthony Moor is the director of editorial operations at Yahoo! Last year, he led the company’s local news efforts.

Previously, Moor was deputy managing editor of interactive at The Dallas Morning News. He has also worked as editor of the OrlandoSentinel.com.