Quick Updates
I was able to attend two sessions and then do my own. It was extraordinarily impressive how seriously these writers, editors, photojournalists take the blogosphere and its newsgathers-to-readers information flow. They are moving quickly from the old one-to-many view of news desemination to the many-to-many which so characterizes the internet world.

The first session covered how newspapers are striving to merge the work of their journalists with the submissions of their readers. Many of the issues we deal with daily at ePluribus Media are some of the same ones that they face... reliability of the data, motivations of the contributors, getting submissions etc.

The second session I attended was a tool geek's heaven. My Better Half has been doing video, audio and stills for his community news blog and it was startling to see how some of the same tools he is using are being used by the pros as their "bottom end" approach. Still, there are many more cameras, audio recorders, mikes, and so forth to drool over. I have now added "shotgun mike" and harddrive digital video camera to his Santa's wish list.

The Keynote Slide Deck

As a test, I saved my powerpoint slide show out as a web page, so if you would like to see it -- just click this link to display it in a separate window Cho's Slides

Or if your browser blocks jscript, jump to this link:Alternative for Cho's slides.

Not too sure how it will work for all browsers...

What struck me the most in talking to the reporters and editors attending is how committed they are to their First Amendment responsibilities.

It was all underscored by the terrible tragedy of a Racine area, Kenosha County Sheriff's deputy, shot and killed when he pulled a driver over, the night before the meeting. Several of those attending had been up late, literally in a "stop the presses" moment, making room on their respective front pages for the news.