JD on the Panel

Christian Crumlish

J.D. Lasica has posted first impressions from the J-school panel:

Last night Dan, Rebecca, Meg, Scott and I participated in a 90-minute panel before Paul Grabowicz's and John Battelle's students at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. About 75 folks showed up. (At one point I asked how many people there hoped to work in a newsroom one day; only 6 raised their hands. How many people had weblogs? A dozen raised their hands.)

While Rebecca Blood, one of the earliest bloggers, doubted that weblogs had much to do with journalism at all and estimated that 99.99 percent of blogs were unrelated to journalism, Dan and I took a different view, that while most webloggers aren't journalists, we're at the beginning of a greatly expanded media ecosystem in which gifted amateurs, niche experts and eyewitnesses giving first-hand accounts are all engaging in a form of journalism.... [P]rofessional journalists should look to weblogs as a new source of news and information and should welcome the participation of gifted amateurs into the news process.

J.D. plans to post a partial transcript. I'd do the same if there was interest. We could triangulate. Dan Gillmor may have beat J.D. as the first panelist to post impressions of the discussion. J.D. also mentions Danny Dawson, who writes in Quasistoic, "Expect a loaded post later tonight on the panel discussion I just attended, my new ideas for this website, my ambitions, and other personal events. I've been inspired. Thank you panel. More to come."

J.D. also beat me to posting pics. That's my next mini-task.