One of the most challenging things for a newspaper transitioning online is overcoming the existence of a working newsroom that’s spent the past few decades producing a print product.

Print journalists have been told to think “web first” and come up with multimedia components to go along with print stories. Obviously it’s important advice, but to a print reporter, it felt like the web was an add-on versus a whole new approach to journalism. Like, we’ll just keep doing exactly what we used to do but with a website, too. That, and there was a huge divide between the print and online sides. Like we had a different mission.

I’ve seen the same skepticism on the faces of high school journalists in print-only programs. They’ve got their hands full putting out a newspaper. You expect us to put all this online, too? And shoot video and blog?

The high school newsroom, with its smaller and (somewhat) more controlled environment, could be the place where we get it right. But how?

I took this question to Paul Kandell, the Dow Jones Newspaper Fund’s 2009 Teacher of the Year.

The Palo Alto High School journalism program includes two print magazines, a newspaper, a yearbook and a broadcast program, but what I’m most interested in is The Paly Voice, the online news component.

The school has had a digital journalism class since 2002, which runs the website and used to be in charge of putting content from the print publications online. Sounds like what many print newsrooms do: Hire some tech people to upload the journalists’ work to the web. This year though, the program made a significant change: giving the passwords to the print publication staff to upload the content themselves.

This change has resulted in the print journalists taking more of an interest in the website. And it’s freed the digital journalism students to pursue other projects, like building a social media presence (complete with a social media editor) and a citizen journalism project created by the new user-generated content team.

Kandell said that over time, the print publications might become multi-platform brands on their own, which could make the digital journalism class obsolete.

“If everybody is a digital journalist, why do you need a class just for digital journalists?”

It’d be great if all schools had such a healthy journalism program — there are 200 students in Palo Alto High School’s advanced journalism classes — but the classrooms I’ve observed included one or two newspaper classes geared completely toward the print product. This means building the website slowly within the print journalism class.

In that case, equal power between the print and online sides is key.

“When you’re ready to make the switch, you have to go all in,” Kandell said. “You cannot have just the nerdy tech kid in the corner doing all the work.”

Such a setup won’t work, Kandell said. For one, “It’s dull. They have to be connected to the excitement of journalism.”

He pointed to The Feather, the award-winning online publication by Fresno Christian High School, as an example of a program that’s gotten it right.

“They just said, ‘If we’re going to do it, we’re going to do it right. We’re going to have an online editor and a print editor, and they are going to have equal power in the class.’”

I think the common theme with these setups is that both the online and print operations have a stake in the website and are learning and practicing journalism. There are no tech geeks who are simply told what to do by the print staff, and the “print” staff takes an active role in uploading content and creating multimedia projects. However the program is organized, the line between online journalist and print journalist becomes blurred, so that eventually, they all have the same mission.