Back at home

I flew home to a county on fire, literally flying over one of the fires and seeing the smoke fill the skies as we approached San Diego.

While I looked forward to the job: serving up reliable news to people who obviously would be wanting and needing it, I knew that the jerry-rigged system we've been using to get the news online wouldn't be up to the task. It wasn't. But we pulled through somehow. Actually thanks to Google. And we were able to give folks what they want.

I ended up working overnight shifts and found the experience of directly interacting with readers through the fireblog to be fascinating and invaluable. Here's my favorite sample. But that's the exception. Most of the comments were amazingly appropriate, constructive and on-target. And all were hugely appreciative.

Here's a story on Poynter on my roller coaster ride last week.

Things are only now getting back to normal.

The super panel wraps things up

The super panel covered a lot of ground, but wasn't nearly as dramatic as last year's, when the TechCrunch guy offended every real journalist in the room.
The panelists were:
Maria C. Thomas, vice president and general manager, NPR Digital Media, moderator
Josh Cohen, business product manager, Google News
Ian Clarke, founder, Thoof, Freenet Project,
Meredith Artley, executive editor, La; times.com
Anil Dash, chief evangelist, Six ApartMovable Type, Wordpad, other blogging software

My notes:
The Google Guy revealed that Google News has between 50-90 people, would not be more specific. (He was pretty cagey throughout.)

Dash- If you treat something as if it's valuable, people will think it's valuable. don't be afraid to ask people to pay. it builds affinity.

Artley - newspaper sites are limited because they are structured like the paper.

Clark - new thing is news in a more categorized way.

Dash - (OK you know this is my favorite part:) Let me take this opportunity to say to the people who run newspaper sites in this room. "Stop having anonymous comments on your site. It's inappropriate. You are not serving yourselves well. People are jerks when they're anonymous. You wouldn't put anonymous information in a story if you can't verify it. At least require a consistent user name."

Cohen - Google ranking: seeks story clusters, most important stories of the day. asks who's publishing it? How often? Where is it on the site?

Clark - we need to ask ourselves: What do we do? What are the special things that we do best?

Predictions:
Cohen: Nobody's solved the riddle yet on the content side
Artley: Things are going to be a lot more openied up, archives, traditional navigation we know wil get blown up.
Clark:
Dash: at least half of large media organizations will be rendered unrecognizable, and that's (probably) a good thing.

Twees and tritterage, er, I mean trees and Twitterage

I'm taking the day off, been a long week and my mind's datastreaming ability has worn down. I'm visiting a friend who lives alongside a gorgeous forest of maple trees with a little creek (I'd add pics but it would cost some ridiculous amount to get them off my phone up here, really) will catch up with some final notes on the shindig when I can. Idea Lab has some folks who kept better track of the conversation.
Updated: Here's me on an western Ontario River:

At the closing panel discussion, I sat next to someone using the online ID macdivaONA, who was covering the speech on Twitter (it sends short text messages to all you want saying what you do at any time.

The conversation was interesting but I couldn't help noticing how this person next to me was covering it: she'd type and swiftly backspace and retype notes of 10 words of so and fire them off in a flash, or, sometimes, she'd pause to open up the website the speaker was talking about, scanning it -- sometimes pausing to send off another note -- then copying the link, going to a site that shortens URLs swiftly, then posting that burst of info about the site with the link (ok she was right next to me and the mac's screen was facing me, so I couldn't help notice.)

Two points about this:

• I was amazed at how this reporter provided a steady stream of coverage, highlight by highlight, without falling behind a thought-provoking and wide-ranging dialog.

• From Twitter's site: Twitter asks, "What are you doing?" Friends answer with short messages. Updates are sent everywhere—instantly! OK that sounds kind of geeky to a lot of people. (Like to me, no one cares what I'm doing every second, it's really not that interesting, trust me) But forget about that for a second and think of how useful Twitter's technology could have been when we covered Duke Cunningham getting sentenced, or everything else, for that matter.

Later.

- tom

Some killer graphics

Some killer graphics from some top talent. But the bottom line for me was that these things are difficult and time-consuming to produce, a challenge to edit, yet something we need to master to prepare for ongoing shift to digital platforms.
Panelists were:
Don Wittekind, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, moderator
Len De Groot, South Florida Sun-Sentinel
Matthew Ericson, The New York Times
Xaquin Gonzalez Veira, Newsweek

Newsweek guy showed:
IEDS The Hidden Enemy wanted to do more with this, but ran out of time, which he likes to call "production issues."
The Hole in Manhattan's Heart
"traffic is much better if well promoted (in the magazine)."

Sun-Sentinal guy showed how his site's redesign will have video player in the middle of story page. Flash. Now it's in a separate player, like SignOn's, which he pointed out doesn't work well for storytelling, better to have everything on same page.
Multimedia media graphic work worthwhile, bringing in thousands more page views.
The Edge, page to highlight Sun-Sentinal multimedia.
some cool things I found on there:
Marine census
Fla boating accidents
Hurricane maker

NYT -
30 people. build templates for multimedia elements. tabs.
Assessing the surge This is really good. very deep and rich
Election Guide 2008
Campaign finances
Candidate schedules

Times guy recommended prominent home page promotion, with a thumbnail of the graphic element so people get a tease to what it is.
Get as much editing done in advance before the data goes into Flash (example: it says By th numbers in the Newsweek IED graphic)

Can you make a good business case for the work these Flash graphics take? Panelists wanted to say yes, but could offer no certainties.

Need some Inspiration? Why journalism must thrive in the digital era

Michael Oreskes, executive editor of the International Herald Tribune, gave a keynote speech on "Audiences, citizens and the future of journalism" that I found inspiring.
Oreskes just helped write a book on the foundations of our democracy, and his take on how the challenges of the current digital age fit into historical trends was thought-providing. Here are my notes of the highlights:


Going to many journalism conventions is like attending a wake for someone who's not dead yet.

The panic is so great.
The panic is wrong, the future of journalism is bright.
but the challenge is substantial and how we solve it will shape the future of journalism and the future of democracy.

I believe the future of journalism is bright because we have the largest audience in the world hungry for what we do. but we do need to need to build new models.

Some of what works best on the internet works against what democracies need to remain strong.
fragmentation is reality. it's a business and democratic challenge.
Elbert Hubbard worked as a special correspondent for Hearst long enough to come up with this definition of journalism: "It's the editors' job to separate the wheat from the chaff and to see that the chaff is published."
Our job is to separate, sort, choose
Our audience is literally drowning in information. like in grain silo with grain being pored in from on top.
Is this overload a problem? No, it's an opportunity, one we can't afford to miss
Business is in a time of crisis.
Mathias Döpfner, top German publisher, told his editors not to commit suicide out of fear of dying.
what is the panic about? what does he mean?

It is only partly true that newspaper circulation is declining, paid circulation in North America and Europe is declining, yes, but total circulation of papers, including free, is increasing. that's not even counting large and rapid growing audiences on the internet.
Knowledge of our rapidly changing world is great and perhaps as great as it has ever been.
The passion with which people respond to stories is a good sign.
Interest in printed newspapers actually goes up with online readers when they are seeking context and analysis
For example, sales of the International Herald Tribune went up 20 percent after London bombings, interest apparently fueled by online reports.

So, it's really a business model crisis. We have fewer people who want to pay for news, and advertisers have more ways to reach customers.

These extraordinary business pressures threaten our ability to practice journalism.
But the solution is journalism. No one in their real life has time to absorb all that info, journalists are (still) needed to separate wheat from the chaff
the more society is inundated with information the more we need journalism, but the increasing sources of information have undermined business model that sustains the journalism.

What's the future of journalism? transparency, ability to interact. We're no longer gatekeepers, maybe guides, referees, Greek chorus
It is clear what we should not become: we must not be just conveyer belts.
We add something important, we are independent observers of the world, with no agenda other than to help audiences absorb the world.
Our obligation is to the truth, loyalty to citizens, discipline of verification
We must maintain our independence, serve as independent monitor of power, forum for public criticism and compromise, make the news significant interesting and relevant, keep news comprehensive and proportional, exercise personal conscience

We have to listen to aggregators, bloggers - pamphleteers & internet strength -
but we must keep our core values to create a new future of journalism.

How we shape the future of journalism is very related to the future of democracy:
- the greater the press freedom, the greater national income per person.
- as press freedom goes up, corruption goes down. countries with free press are cleaner and wealthier, don't let anyone tell you that what we do doesn't matter.

The demand for quality news and info will remain strong

James Madison - knowledge will forever govern ignorance, and people who mean to be own governors must arm selves with power knowledge gives them
Unlimited freedom of everyone pursing own interests as in 1776-87 showed that's not a good thing - you must have a system that enables compromise.

The internet is pushing in the opposite direction, toward greater specialization, less need to encounter people who we don't agree with

The essence of democratic society is the recognition that the world doesn't orient around any one of us, but all of us, audience, consumers, and citizens. vertical (organization of news content) is opposite of democratic, encourage specialization, good for biz, but we need to do more.

We as journalists need to find a way to make our websites have the democratic values of a newspaper, serendipity.

We can bring different people together. democracy does not function well unless people are exposed to people whose views they don't agree with or that they didn't even know about.

A diversity of voices has always been good journalism, and true democratization. If we can build that we will have built not only a bright future for journalism but a bright future for democracy as well.
(If you want to read the whole thing, Mike put his speech online.)

Letting readers do the work

Tips from the trenches from three people whose jobs rely on user-generated content:

Linda Strean, GreatSchools.net (used by SignOn)
Her site is based on parent reviews, 100,000 schools, 300,000 reviews. but not three per school, some have more many have none
they premoderate all reviews, actually 50 stay-at-home moms paid a bit to moderate them.
Alvardo elementary school

Lila King, CNN
runs a user participation group. 3 other producers
every day to try to engage audience. uses iReport.
But before you can integrate any ugc into storytelling, you have to get it. (And verify it)
You need to mine the newsroom - how can people participate? need to do a loto of evangelizing.
Good topics weather, spot news and obituaries.
Don't just dump notebook. It has to be better than what you'd get if you searched for topic on flickr.
After Virginia Tech attack, CNN set up pages for victims, then asked for tributes. They flowed in.
UPDATED: take a look at the form CNN has readers submit to offer up material. They really have this thought through. On a related note, here's the BBC's statement of standards on using user creaed material, which is really the gold standard.

Patrick Cooper, USA TODAY
Network journalism, try to create a network valuable to what people are seeing? what are they saying? what are are they doing?
USAT's Football Blog squad 60 blogs, stream them into every story. part of our coverage.
Pop Candy forum
Passport woes Asked readers for their stories, got good stuff
Reader photos Take your best weather shots - run the best of the week in paper on Saturday.
get name email, phone number check it out
UPDATED: At USA Today, it looks like you have to become a member to contribute stuff. "What are the benefits of membership?As a USATODAY.com member, you can participate in the nation's conversation by contributing your own comments and reviews throughout the entire USATODAY.com site. Interact with our expert journalists, your input will guide the conversation. Connect with other readers on the site. Create your own blog. Upload photos. Find and interact with people like you."

How does one vet this stuff?
USAToday uses a "collaborative moderating system." Cooper said they were happy with Pluck's sitelife product, the software the site uses for user created material.
King told how you have to use the sniff test to check it sometimes, relating how someone with CNN was calling to check on a fire picture, and the woman who sent it in apologized it had taken so long but she wasn't that fast with Photoshop. It turned out the woman had painstakingly erased a power line cutting across the main image, which is very bad. The picture wasn't used.

What I took from this is that it takes a lot of work and preparation to harvest this stuff, and it's probably only going to work for large outfits who have a big field to seed. It needs to be a full-time job, and the site has to be geared to gather and display the material, the display being the only real reward contributors get from their work.

UPDATED: Here's another take on the panel.

Filling new niches

Just a few notes on yesterday's "The Future of Publishing" panel. It was about how the web -- ok, the Web -- is quickly being transformed by social media platforms and, in some cases, supplanted by alternative content delivery methods,organized by my ever efficient and appropriately named friend Amy Webb.

One of the presenters was Brian Gruber of Fora.tv, a site trying to create an "ecosystem" based on videos of presentations by world thought leaders captured by third parties. So Condi Rice gives a speech on something and it ends up on this site, along with other talks by other leaders in politics, thought, business, culture, etc. The early bisiness model is sponsorship, trying to create an elite environment for leading companies.
"There are brilliant people around the world presenting in public places and their audience is constrained by physical locations, so we create an environment or an ecosystem for global brands who want to be thought leaders, want to associate their brand as leaders in safe and trusted environment."

The other guy offering a new tpe of content was Erik Schwartz of foneshow, which is a new fledgling way of getting audo content on your cellphone. The idea behind that is that podcasts never took off as promised because plugging one's iPod or other MP3 player into a computer to download every broadcast is a geeky hassle. This service sends out podcasts to people's cell phones -- which, he noted, are now more numerous in the world than toasters -- so they can listen to them whenever and wherever they are.

The bottom line, as Amy put it, was the news sites don't have have to be building all these sorts of things from scratch, that there's plenty of new services popping up that we can partner with or at least utilize as we try to broaden our digital reports.

Unmerged and merging

Some highlights from the Leading a 21st Century Newsroom panel:

Jim Brady, executive editor and vice president of washingtonpost.com, said initially no one in the print newsroom was interested in online. Now newsrooms are struggling to train journalists in new technology. Post is separate from Post.com, across the river, different companies.

Merging print and online newsrooms meant changing the traditional newsroom structure, said Kinsey Wilson, executive editor of USA Today and USAToday.com Wilson: "We're in for 10 years of profound turmoil."
"As we rethink things from the ground up, we're going to have to push responsibility down as far as possible." Compared with a traditional newsroom, decision-making is done at a much lower level, by the hands-on folks.
Every day at 4 pm Brady meets with VP of advertising to discuss any intrusive ads.

Objectivity or transparency?

I sat near the door at the workshop intended to begin composing a set of guidelines for the ONA on the ethics of staffers writing blogs. That's because I feared it would be lame and obvious. Thanks largely to some really good moderating by Anthony Moor, now the online boss at the Dallas Morning News, it proved fascinating, indeed eye-opening.
It was a wide-ranging discussion on a broad range of ethical issues related to staff-written blogs. I couldn't capture it all here, but let me just go over some of the questions that were raised:

• Should reporters be allowed to write blogs on their own time?
  
• Should they be restricted to topics outside their coverage area?


• What about other personal publishing platforms, Twitter, Flikr, etc?


• Should news sites disclose a writer's political affiliations, interests, activities, personal interests, sexual orientations? Can we make writers do that?


• Or is keeping all that stuff private part of the price we have to pay to preserve the appearance of objectivity?

I had a long conversation about this afterward with my friend John Burr of the Florida Times-Union. Our "keepers-of-the-faith" take on it: While we must adapt to the new digital world, we must preserve the core values of our profession. We must avoid public expressions of our political viewpoints. And besides, revealing everyone's personal information would just make readers go nuts. A better expenditure of effort would be to explain to our readers why this is the case, not being arrogant, as Mr. Keen recommended last night, but assertive of our culture of objective verification.
The comments were all over the place, and there's a ways to go before the ONA will come up with a policy everyone can agree to. Poynter has set up a wiki to talk about blog ethics. Now the ONA has one too, at www.journalists.org/members/wiki/doku.ph , where members can offer their thoughts. (Join now! It's only $50.)

Getting started with databases

The lively and entertaining presenter for this was David Miliron of Caspio, who was with AJC for 10 years. Started with 10 yrs at Gannett. Was a reporter who morphed into a database guy. He conceded up from that this wasn't the hands-on training session it was billed as, but was rather an overview of how papers can create databases to reach customers we might not otherwise reach.
He didn't say but Caspio sells prebuilt tool for web databases. They host them, they create the interface, you put them on your site.
"Making searchable databases available online connects nicely to the public service mission of the news media, we are news and ,information companies. Increased traffic means more page views, which means more revenue opportunities."
what's hot online:

• School report cards
• Crime data
• Home sales data
• Public employee salaries
• Restaurant reviews /inspections

"You need to make sense of the data, not just throw spaghetti against the wall and see what sticks."

Questions to ponder:
Will putting the data online make money? (It will only if ad people know what you're doing and how to sell the ads around it.)
What resources does it take to acquire, scrub, normalize, post and update? (it must be kept current or it's worthless)
How does it fit into our watchdog journalism responsibility

Roughly, $8 for every 1,000 impressions for ad value, that is each ad is worth $8 for each thousand.

Make them findable, have one page for databases, because people will come in to a database site who wouldn't care to read a newspaper. So use a ticker or something else on the database site to make it sticky, put your hot news items on there to pull them in.

Have a standardized template for every database page you create.
On every search page need to have search tips, a key to search results and a widget to add search results to your site.

Examples to check out: Databank at Florida Times Union and Cincinnati Enquirer's Cincinavigator

A yahoo for Yahoo!

Hilary Schneider, exec vice pres, global partner solutions division, Yahoo, gave the keynote address. Here's some notes, but the bottom line is that I'm now wondering if we should have said yes to the Yahoo newspaper consortium partership, if only for the traffic it brings.

We're still in the early innings. We've just seen the tip of the iceberg on what we can do in integrated media.
Fragmentation is reality, users moving from broadbased media to other choices, there's a plethora of choices, so how do you stand out?
what are people searching for? Local internent search is top issue. then entertainment, then e-mail, general news then local news.
Online ad spending is increassing. expected to rise from $3.4 bill estimated in 2006 to $12.4 billion by 2010. That means $9 billion moving to online from other media.
Local search is also growing by leaps, bounds., at Yahoo, 1/3 of search queries have local intent.
How many is that? Yahoo has 500 million unique users monthly.
Most common searches: local queries, maps, local news and info, social media, classified verticals directory, other
That means there's a huge market opportunity for local advertisers
buying online is $120 billion, but researching onling but buying offline is $1.3 trillion
Geotagged photos are an example of the growing strength of local
what it leads to is local news meeting global news, with millions of personal prespectives shared bringing depth to national and international news.
such layers of information build relevance, give users the options
(check out Yahoo's Beta MAPMIXER gallery)
Not all user gen content is good, of course, but users can rate and value content for you, so you have to create editing functions in which the public edits for you, to help the cream rise to the top
she showeds how Mitt Romney's campaign let viewers create their own Mitt ad. the ad tested as well as professionally produced material. It let the most passionate users focus their passon on behalf of candidate.
Yahoo Democratic Campaign mashup allowed readers to create their own campaign debate.
The need to create more comprehensive features and coverage, such as the House of Lies by Miami Herald.
But you can link to third party content through partnerships can strengthen independence. Make sure you protect band and voice, just because you can doesn't mean you should (hey! that's my motto!) focus and place big bets as you go, seek out companies as partners that share your values.
She detailed how Yahoo partnershoip, now 19 members, 398 newspapers. 20 m sunday circulation. Local news, advertising, circulation (ie newspapers) is the best of breed. we don't want to supplant that, we want readers to click over, we're a distribution methd.
We want to embrace journalist values, look for new ways to engage readers in stories, partners to acquire best of breed technologies and platforms, change fast and often.
My favorite quote: Today's innovations will create tomorrow's digital leaders.
She talked a lot about maintaining traditional journalism values in new online world. But she left out how the culture of verification she cited can be implemented in the world of user-generated content. I asked her about this and she gave a good answer, but really, as with a lot of the things we're talking about here, it was an answer based on hope, that we have to trust our public to police this stuff. That works with communities of great scale, but I and several other inky wretches here are concerned about that barn door being left open. Only time will tell.

Journalism or schmournalism?

Attended a special panel discussion at the CBC HQ on the Future of the Future of News, looking at how technology -- such as citizen journalism and Web 2.0 tools -- can be used by the media to provide greater public service to citizens and communities. Participants were:Andrew Keen, author of the controversial polemical book "The Cult of the Amateur"; Leonard Brody, the entrepreneur who started NowPublic.com and Rahaf Harfoursh, a blogger and user-generated content proponent.
It was basically a debate between Keen on the pro journalism side, and Brody and Harfoush on the user-generated content side.

The main point of Keen's book and his remarks were that treating user-generated content the same as professionally created journalism dumbs down society. ignorance=arrogance=bad taste=mob rule
He recommended journalists get even more arrogant, asset their claim to professional reporting and presentation.

Brody's site is one of the largest and most successful user-generated content sites, with some 130,000 contributors all over the world: how does NowPublic pay its contributors? "we pay them in love."
He conceded they they are corruptible as anyone, but said that the wisdom of the crowd will expose shenanigans before too long.

Keen (who thinks letting everyone be a journalist is a very bad thing for society): "Everyone can be eyes and ears they can all contribute but can they all be journalists? No."

Brody: No more trusted news brands (dominating the stories).
search is driving the process. most people are looking at 12-16 news sites per day (he said per story, but he meant per day

Keen: don't do away with (traditional) memory. the only way to preserve your authority is to be authoritative.

Brody: "Your children will not read newspapers. News brands will survive."
(he cited recent McKinsey study on news consumer habits. I ned to look that up.)

Harfoush - quality and trustworthiness is down, access and immediacy is up.
It's all about speed and different perspectives.

Keen: It doesn't really matter what kids think about news.

Brody: They (users) are a network of eyes and ears that journalists can use.
hyperlocality has given way to hyperpersonality. that is, to news products people customize for their own needs, interests.
The big change will be he ubiquity of GPS, so you can locate people and where their cell-phone cameras are taking the videos.
Journalists can still do what they do best:

• storytelling
• information packaging (putting it all together, that is)
• analysis
  

He was right about that.

Keen predicted that the next pendulum swing will be towad greater expertize, greater authority. that is, the experts will replace the amateurs.

Nice digs

We got a brief tour of the Canadian Broadcasting Corp building today. It's a pretty amazing place, very high tech newsroom, but it was especially interesting because online is still a fledgling part of this massive organization, yet they know it's a huge part of their future.

Colleges unconverged

I had lunch with two friends of mine who have left their newsrooms since we last met -- Washingtonpost.com and the Christian Science Mnitor -- and are now college professors teaching multimedia and online news. It was interesting to hear how their universities are having trouble figuring out how to fit online into existing print, broadcast and PR departments.
It seems to me that creating a separate online department continues to foster the separation and cultural misunderstandings that have been a hindrance to full convergent collaboration. Online needs to be part of everything, print, broadcast and communications/PR.
(I actually liked the way they have it set up at one school, where PR is part of the school of business. Teach future CEOs how to do damage control now, I say.)

It's grey, but not that cold

On a personal note, Sue had me bring a parka and enough warm clothes to wear while leading a dog team across the ice. It's 60 degrees outside so I may not need the gloves, the cap and the scarf afterall. I did forgot to bring any neckties, but I found out they sell them here.

Training scribes to shoot

I spent the day in a class on how to train reporters to shoot video, learning a lot in the process.
The trainer was Chet Rhodes, the assistant managing editor for news video for washingtonpost.com. Basically it better prepared me to give an introductory course in shooting video to even the greatest Luddite among us. ("This is Mr. Battery,...") And it was nice to realize that we're ahead of many news shops in getting video online.

Some highlights:
Why video now?

• YouTube is hugely popular, has popularized videos online.
• technology makes it possible
• It's a great storytelling medium
• It will happen anyway - don't let Google get there first (YouTube is planning to create local video channels, which is scary.)

The Post's strategy for video has two aspects: reporter-shot video and video shot by photojournalists in the print newsroom or videojournalists who work for online. He focused on the reporter-produced material, which the Post's web crew edits and posts.
The material coming from the photo department or the website is more of the high-end visual report. Reporters shoot -- but usually do not edit -- the two-minute interviews with newsmakers or the cute widdle penguin chick.
Rhodes said some of the best work is in the middle, the overlap.

The Post has 6 video journalists at website, 140 reporters trained in shooting video with a dozen more trained each month. (they have 800 in print newsroom, 90 in online newsroom, which is really separate, a different company than the paper.) Also print photo desk has a multimedia component.

Under the reporter model:

• back office video staff to edit and publish. (post has 3 video editors)
• focus on training
• uses small inexpensive cameras (7 in newsroom, IT techs issue them, now taking them to bureaus) these are the kind we've found are not usable for most breaking news assignments
• can generate lot of content.

The reporter training:

• need to overcome technical training challenges (assume they've never done video before)
• must be useful
• needs to be short, less than 1 1/2 hours
• provide clear examples
• use as opportunity to show wide range of visual storytelling possibilities (teach them about the site)

Video benefits the reporter cause it can capture color for a story, allow for quote checks, adds depth to web package. The easiest web thing for a reporter to do is to take video.

Editing own material teaches shooting skills better, but is very time-intensive. I talked to him about this. While the learning curve of having reporters learn to edit their own video is steep, at the end of the process, you'd be ahead of an outfit where only a few people can edit the stuff.

He had a very specific but basic training regimen that I'll inflict, er, share with the team when I get back.

Next thing is something on the future of news at the CBC headquarters, which should be interesting.

Sounds kinda desperate to me

Roy Peter Clark's Catholic guilt trip on newspapers -- Your duty to read the paper -- has sparked an interesting passel of comments on the Poynter site.
I tend to agree with this fellow, Svend Holst, new media manager of The Wenatchee World:

"... This continuing resistance to change in our industry is frustrating. Frustrating because it's this sort of resistance to change that will, and is, killing the bottom line of newspapers across the country.

Seems to me that it would be more important to the future of journalism would be for journalists to read newspaper Web sites to get a better feel for how to tell their stories better with the more sophisticated tools at their fingertips with digital publication. If newspaper Web sites deliver the news better than other sources, more people will read them and more revenue will be handy to pay for excellent reporters and editors.

Can newspaper Web sites produce the same revenue as print advertising now? No. Is the print-centric newspaper industry putting as much energy into online revenue as they are toward print revenue? No. Are some newspapers moving in that direction? Yes. Are they finding success? Yes. The revenue will be there, but as we focus on preserving the use of trees to tell stories and sell advertising, we're failing to position ourselves to compete for it. Our sales folks (generally, industry-wide) sell print first and throw in online ads as an afterthought.Chaining journalism to any medium shows a lack of understanding of how information is digested and shared by the public (including journalists) now. It's not the future that is growing beyond newsprint, it's the present. Print/paperless ... Need to move past this stuff."

Panel plan

Here are the panels I plan to attend (and the one I'm speaking at). And here's the full conference agenda. For several of the sessions, I'm undecided on which panel to attend, so do let me know if you have a recommendation for one panel over another.

Wednesday, Oct. 17
Time: 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. So You Want to Shoot Video?
Join washingtonpost.com's Chet Rhodes, an award-winning videojournalist, as he walks participants through the fundamentals of shooting news video. The session will include hands-on training, including how to set up shots, gather quality audio, frame the subject, work with lighting, capture action and more. Participants will each shoot some video as part of the training, and Rhodes will evaluate their work while discussing strategies for successful implementation. Rhodes also will show examples of published video shot by those who have completed his video training workshop.

6 p.m. to 7:30 p.m.
Special CBC News Forum: The Future of the Future of News Technology is rapidly transforming the way citizens consume media and how the media communicates information. This forum will explore how technology -- such as citizen journalism and Web 2.0 tools -- can be used by the media to provide greater public service to citizens and communities. The forum will be streamed live on CBCNews.ca and segments from the discussion will appear on CBC TV and CBC Radio. Participants include: Andrew Keen, author, The Cult of the Amateur; Leonard Brody, CEO, NowPublic.com; Rahaf Harfoursh, Research Coordinator, "Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything"

Thursday, Oct. 18, 2007
8 a.m. to 9 a.m.Breakfast Discussion Groups Sponsored by the LA Times

9:15 a.m. to 10:30 a.m.Keynote: Hilary Schneider, Yahoo!

10:45 a.m. to 11:45 a.m.
Either: Getting Started With Databases PHP, MySQL, ASP, Ajax, Django, Python, Ruby on Rails: The list of options and techniques for using online databases can be staggering. Hunker down for a hands-on workshop for beginners that will help you get started creating great database projects. David Milliron, Caspio Inc., session leader

Using Serious Games to Engage Readers There's a reason people like to play games - they're fun! But that doesn't mean they're frivolous. So come to this fun - and not frivolous - panel to learn how news Web sites can use games to engage readers and better convey information. After all, people learn better from doing stuff than from having stuff explained to them. And with this panel, the audience will "do stuff" too. Larry Dailey, University of Nevada, Reno, moderator; Chris Swain, EA Game Innovation Lab, USC; J. Paige West, MSNBC.com; Marc Prensky, Games2train

1:15 p.m. to 2:15 p.m.
One of these three:What Makes Web Sites Work? Analysis and Design DecisionsPage view reports aren't just for the advertising, business and marketing departments. How can editorial read, understand and make use of page view reports to inform coverage and design? What hidden gems can editors, reporters, designers and producers find to help them create a more informative and more engaging news Web site? Experts present their research and offer tips on how to improve your site. Nora Paul, University of Minnesota; Laura Ruel, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill


Becoming a Community Evangelist
This might be the beginning of a beautiful relationship. Learn how to harness the passion and creativity of your community to become a local sensation and a meaningful online gathering place. JD Lasica, moderator; Rob Curley, washingtonpost.com; Jay Rosen, New York University; Dan GillmorThe Future of PublishingThe Web is quickly being transformed by social media platforms and, in some cases, supplanted by alternative content delivery methods. What happens when the Web is no longer enough? Digital media gurus discuss innovative new ways that companies outside of journalism are starting to use cell phone networks, instant messaging services and more to distribute editorial content. Amy Webb, Webbmedia Group, moderator Erik Schwartz of foneshow; Gary Baumgarden of Paltalk.com; Brian Gruber of Fora.tv; Hiram Enriquez of Yahoo!

2:30 p.m. to 3:30 p.m.Covering a Tragedy Among the many questions asked following the tragedy at Virginia Tech was a this journalistic one: how did people on campus get their information? And where did journalists turn to look up names and faces? From Facebook to SMS, new resources and tools are helping people find each other in a crisis. How does this impact journalism and journalists? What resources might journalists want to consider; what lines might they not want to cross? Bill Mitchell, Poynter Online; Amie Steele, The Collegiate Times; Meg Smith, The Washington Post; Austin Morton, Virginia Tech student; Tom Mallory, The San Diego Union-Tribune.

4 p.m. to 5 p.m.
one of these three:
Covering ElectionsElections always get lots of coverage, but how much of that really informs the electorate? With the U.S. presidential contest already underway - and several other countries girding for their own elections - this panel will take a look at how online news organizations can prepare themselves and come up with new ways of helping readers understand and take part in the process. Wendy Warren, TheNextMayor.com and Philadelphia Daily NewsJosh Tyrangiel, Time; Kevin Rooney, opensecrets.org;

Using Metrics to Make Your Site Sticky How do you know if you have a successful site? What do traffic numbers really mean, and do they reflect your actual user audience? How can you turn a story viral, so that eventually directs more traffic to your site? How can you get the most out of blogs, video and other stories? Includes Consumer Reports focus-group study. Dorian Benkoil, consultant; Hosam Elkhodary, of The Web Analytics Co. Ltd.

Managing Online Communities
One of the greatest challenges news sites face is how to encourage - and cope with - community interaction. What are the best practices for ensuring your message boards, user blogs and more are successful havens for dedicated users, rather than lairs for spiteful trolls? Adam Glenn, a2g media, moderator; Blake Williams, Topix; Robin Miller, Linux.com/Slashdot; Marc Mercer, Advance Internet

Friday, Oct. 19

8:30 a.m. to 9:30 a.m.
Either:The Cutting Edge of Online Data The Web is bursting with data being gathered and presented in astonishing new ways. Take a tour of the latest trends in online information and learn how these methods can make your site a must-have for your users. Adrian Holovaty, washingtonpost.com, session leaderor: Web 3.0 Overview: Semantic WebWhat is Web 3.0, and will the "semantic" web really work? How much data are we going to be able to store, sort, read, knead, and spit out? Will this emerging search technology eventually help - or hurt - mainstream journalism? (Session leader to be named.)

2 p.m. to 3 p.m.
Integrating Multimedia in Storytelling As the use of photo slideshows, Flash graphics, audio and video proliferates online, how are sites working that content into their site? Are they separate elements, or integrated elements? Different approaches work for different content and sites. See examples of success stories and how to make multimedia as much as part of the story as it deserves. Don Wittekind, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, moderator; Len De Groot, South Florida Sun-Sentinel; Matthew Ericson, The New York Times; Xaquin Gonzalez Veira, Newsweek

3:15 p.m. to 4:15 p.m.
Integrating User-Generated Content What issues are facing organizations as they try to adapt to a user-generated content world? How can that content be integrated into news sites without compromising journalistic integrity, confusing the reader, and informing the coverage? Our panel discusses how to encourage meaningful contributions, rely on users, and integrate that content into the site. Dean Wright, Reuters, moderator; Linda Strean, GreatSchools.net; Patrick Cooper, USA TODAY; Lila King, CNNTime:

4:45 p.m. to 6 p.m.
Superpanel: Journalism Next: Impact of Aggregators, Blogging and Social Networking on the Industry Should today's online journalists embrace, fear or ignore YouTube? What about the bloggers who are scooping beat reporters and developing robust sourcebooks to break news? With Google News and other increasingly popular aggregator services delivering news content catered to individual tastes, are editors worrying too much about what to put on the front door? Hear the diverse viewpoints of leaders from new media outlets and the online arms of traditional news sources in our special ONA SuperPanel. Maria C. Thomas, vice president and general manager, NPR Digital Media, moderator; Josh Cohen, business product manager, Google News;Ian Clarke, founder, Thoof; Meredith Artley, executive editor, Latimes.com; Anil Dash, chief evangelist, Six Apart

Pressing restart

Well it wasn't easy to do, but I have "reclaimed" my blog from Blogspot, as it is now Blogger, and have it running under our g-Mail account. Now if I can just remember the password, we'll be cooking with gas again.
However, I do wish I could hide all the posts from last year but not completely lose them. A year ago is so long in Internet time, and much of the stuff from last year already sounds so, well, last year.
Cheers, tom