The original home of the blog known as 802 Online

Friday, March 11, 2005

Ask and ye shall receive: Bloggers at JSC Conference...sort of

When I called the number posted below for the Johnson State College Community Journalism Day conference, a woman in admissions told me she'd already read my post and had fowarded it to JSC Journalism Professor Tyrone Shaw. This morning, Shaw called to explain that though bloggers won't be represented on this month's panels, JSC will have a separate conference for "alternative media" next fall. Bloggers are still invited to participate on the 25th, and he wants any bloggers who come to stick around for a 4pm meeting to plan next fall's event. Cool.

My only quibble is that I think iBrat in particular deserves a place at the table with the other eds at that meeting. It's an alternative medium, but in practice it's serving much the same function as some of those other newspapers. Putting it on its own day is kind of misleading, I think. But hey, it's not my conference.

I'm encouraged that the folks at JSC were so responsive. This is exciting. Good job getting the word out, VT bloggers.

Shaw's letter:
Dear Cathy, Morgan, and other bloggers: :

A number of you have contacted me expressing your concern at being excluded from the panels for the upcoming event at Johnson. I hope you will see this differently after this explanation.

The March 25 event is only the second of what will be a rolling forum at Johnson on issues in Vermont journalism. Last October we held our first, which was on Ethics and featured an ethics workshop for Vermont high school students in the morning and an afternoon interactive panel forum in the afternoon. These panels, if all are to have reasonable time to participate, need to be limited in size. Obviously, we cannot invite everyone we’d like at one time, and choices have to be made. Many Vermont publications have yet to be included, but we hope to see them at future events as this forum becomes established.

As you note, blogging is an emerging force in journalism, both locally and nationally, and a significant one, I believe. Which brings us to my next point: The next Journalism Day, which will be in September or October, will be devoted entirely to alternative media in Vermont. Obviously bloggers and blogging will be a significant part of that forum, during which we will also explore public access broadcasting, "pirate radio," and a variety of alternative print media as well. The absence of bloggers on either of the upcoming panels reflected our decision to explore emerging media in its own forum and was not intended as any kind of slight. Yes, there are other ways to handle this, but given our resources, we figured this would be the most effective. Believe me, we know you’re out there.

I hope the blogger community will join the panels for the fall event, in addition to helping us design that day. Work on "Vermont’s Alternative Media" will begin in April, at which point initial letters of invitation will be sent out. In the meantime, we warmly encourage you to visit us on March 25. As audience participants, you will play an important part in these discussions.

Finally, I would like to meet afterwards with anyone interested in helping us to design next fall’s forum. That meeting will take place at 4:00.

Best Wishes,
Tyrone Shaw
Comments:
Wow, blogging AND public access??? I'll definitely check that out. Thanks for the heads up, Cathy!
 
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