I've been bopping around the blogosphere over the past couple of days, and I knew what I said at the closing wouldn't be heard quite the way I meant it (must learn to sync mouth and brain)...
When I said that I only saw "people' in the room, I meant that there was no difference between the people and the journalists who were there...there was no us-them. We were all People.
My frustration was with the great number who had left after the Wednesday dinner, who were wringing their hands over the '04 election, or who left by Thursday lunch.
That was the sad thing. Many of them didn't get to meet many of us who were in the room.
When professionals--be they doctors, dentists, lawyers, journalists--never bother to talk with the people, how can they understand what the people are doing?
Too few are having experiences like John Donley's or Teresa Hannifin's (at Boston Globe) or are conducting the great experiments that go on at WashingtonPost.com....too few journo schools are doing the cool things that Paul Grabowitz talked about. And SPJ is really priviledged to have a leader like Dave Carlson.
Am I expecting too much? Is it that so much of this is still in its infancy? Maybe that's what my concerns are--maybe my concerns are that things *are* in their infancy and everyone has to be *very* careful. We can't afford to be wringing our hands over the past, walking away, turning our backs. We need to be in the same room, talking with one another, not about one another....
then again, maybe that's another conference. Maybe this was only the beginning...
MGP2006 Journalism, citizen journalism, media, Blogging
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