The tech-savvy speakers at AASFE’s technology panel told a room full of feature editors that they should not only find out, but keep up with the newfangled terms and tech products that their readers haven’t even of heard yet.

It’s one of the few ways feature sections can stay relevant as technology continues to reinvent the world, said the panelists: David Okamoto of Yahoo!, Chris Marlowe of the Hollywood Reporter and Gil Asakawa of the Denver Post. Dallas Morning News arts editor Rick Holter moderated the discussion.

“Technology marches on, and you either get on that train or you’re lost,” said Asakawa, who is executive producer of development and production for DenverPost.com. “From the top down, we need to think differently and embrace change.”

Okamoto began the session by introducing some startling statistics.

• 9.2 million households are estimated to have personal video recording services such as Tivo, up more than 100 percent from a year ago
• 42.7 million homes are estimated to have digital video recorders in 2010
• $201 million was spent on downloading music last year, not including people who are also buying CDs
• 53 percent of Americans have high speed Internet at home.

For features editors, those stats compute to moving technology beyond the business page, said Marlowe, the Hollywood Reporter’s editorial director for digital media.

Lifestyle reporters could explore the trend of cell phone games for toddlers. An automotive writer could discuss alternatives to satellite radio — such as HD Radio, which is out now — or the Home and Garden reporter could explain how to tastefully decorate a living room when one has a 52-inch flat screen TV.

Focus on technology’s magic and how it’s transforming people’s lives, she urged. Not its bits and bytes.

“I want you to rethink what a tech story actually is,” Marlowe told the crowd. “It’s really not setting it aside, like off with the leper colony.”

Barbara Schuler, a features editor at Newsday, said afterward that she thought the panel was “fabulous,” and that she’ll be taking ideas on HD Radio and new cell phone technology back with her. She said Newsday has already done some blogs and they’re talking a lot about podcasting.

Still, with so few people having actually downloaded a podcast — Marlowe cited statistics showing that less than 800,000 Americans have heard one — it’s a balance, Schuler said.

“You want to be timely, but you don’t want to be so ahead of the curve that your readers don’t even have that technology,” she said. “But we’ll certainly be looking into that. We’re past that stage where we’re fighting it. We embrace it.”

Glossary
Blog – n. Short for Web log; usually a simple Web site consisting of commentary written in the first person, with links, archives and a place for readers to comment.

Podcast – n. A non-music audio file that one can download to an MP3 player. Podcasts usually consist of one or more persons talking about a specific topic, such as politics, news, movies or sports.

PSP – n. The common name for a Play Station Portable, a hand-held Play Station.

Pass back – n. According to the Hollywood Reporter’s Chris Marlowe, this is the phenomenon of parents handing a cell phone to their young children, to keep them occupied.

Source: AASFE Technology panelists; staff research