Ouch

I saw this scene at the gas station yesterday. Right next to the dollar beef jerky.

[The price of the Statesman drops from 1.50 to .75]

We better figure this online journalism thing out soon. At the symposium, I heard Jim Brady from The Washington Post, Jim Lenahan from Gannett, Dave Panos from Pluck Social Media speak in a panel about engaging communities for news Web sites, but none of these guys were as interesting as Mario Tascon from El Pais in Spain and Georgia Popplewell from globalvoicesonline.org.

I know there are people doing the online thing right in the U.S. but it seems that we’re way too concerned with hyper local pet picture communities rather than cross-cultural issues or communities around news.

I think BBC has figured things out pretty well too. Alfred Hermida talked at the symposium about how important blogging is for news organizations. He even blogged about him talking at the symposium about blogging. Amazing. This part really sums it up for me, he included this abstract for his research on the subject.

The findings suggest that the BBC is approaching blogging as a tool to enhance trust with audiences through expanded transparency and accountability, in an attempt to transform its historical elitist attitude towards its audiences.

Online Journalism Symposium Online By Journalists. Whew.

So UT’s Online Journalism Symposium is already underway, I think lunch is going on right now so stop by ACES, freeloaders! Anyway, it is being heavily covered by journalism students (and rightly so.) Check out the web site, which also has a link to the blog. I’ve also added my Twitter feed and I’ll be updating during the day about random silly/funny/boring/important things. Notice how I added important last.

There’s so many important journalists at this symposium from around the world, so at least check out the coverage and stop by the second floor of the ACES (computer science building on Speedway and 24th).