Chris O'Brien, a business columnist for the San Jose Mercury News, makes a feasible list of suggestions for the newsroom looking to transform itself into an online-first operation in this post for the Knight Digital Media Center.
She discusses workflow, deadlines, content distribution, and linking, among other things. In short, the message is: Push the print edition aside quite a bit, accept the future more than you defend the past.
It's a useful post, also summarized here by Martin Langeveld in News After Newspapers.