A Day at the Blogging Conference

Day one of the “Blogging and Journalism” conference at the Kennedy School is over. It exceeded my expectations; of course, my expectations weren’t very high. I’m not sure that any grand conclusions were reached, but it was fun to meet guys like Jeff Jarvis and Jay Rosen, to see Joe Trippi again and to give a couple of newspaper interviews. And it was fun to give Jill Abramson, Managing Editor of the New York Times, advice on how the paper can learn from bloggers. It was also entertaining to see sparks fly, on occasion, between new media and old media types. (The usual provocateur was Dave Winer.)
The last session of the day, moderated by Jarvis, included discussion of whether it’s possible to make money by blogging. Everyone perked up for that one. And bloggers out there should start polishing their resumes: when asked whether the Times is interested in hiring top bloggers as journalists, Ms. Abramson said, “Hugely, yes.”
Whether there was any audience for this, I have no idea. I haven’t yet had time to check our email to see whether any of our readers were listening. Someone had to be following along, since questions were occasionally transmitted from a chat room or something, including a couple from Iran.
One of my goals was to figure out what the heck a “podcast” is; no luck yet, but I’ve got another day to work on it.