It was nice to hear Jonathan Dube, president of the Online News Associaton, note this morning as our annual gathering began that while many journalists associations are canceling conferences -- actually some are scaling them back or combining conferences -- the ONA shindig is again a sell-out.
Obviously it's because newshounds know this is where our future will lie.
And it was heartening that Robert Niles noted this morning that the woe-is-us "whining" that prevailed at many previous conferences is now being replaced by a more hopeful and practical tone. (I heard Jay Rosen made the same point on Twitter but "Older posts are now unavailable.") I volunteered to steward my second ONA conference at after going to one and finding it - OK, I'm sorry - a mourning session, almost a wake, with presenters offering up chart after chart about declining print readership and increasing online use.
I wanted to shout out, "Hey! We're still strong, we still have huge audiences that respect what we do and we have time to fix what we need to fix." It was good that most of what was offered up today was practical, positive and focused on what we can - and have to do - to survive and thrive.
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