After the layoffs of 31 colleagues and the resignations of 15 more, Merc business columnist Dean Takahashi (pictured) is asking readers for ideas on how the paper can tailor its product to meet their needs.

“we can make the newspaper more useful to everybody and to make ourselves relevant to readers online. The problem is we’ve got two beasts to feed, our online and print products. The print product makes us most of our money. The online revenue is growing but it has serious competition. Our older readers like the newspapers the way it is. But if we don’t get young readers, then we’ll eventually become irrelevant. No one in our industry has figured out this problem.”

Here’s hisblog and the responses he got back.