It used to be so simple to stay abreast of important community news and information: You grabbed a copy of your hometown newspaper or tuned in to your local TV or radio station. The rapid growth of the Internet has changed that, threatening the future of those 20th century purveyors of news (like the long-gone newsboy represented at left) while giving people access to so much information it can be difficult to sift through it all. With those changes in mind, an eclectic group representing the worlds of media, technology, business and government convened in Washington, D.C., to begin a yearlong study of how to keep communities connected in the digital age.