Sunday, November 19, 2006

Bloggers to Invade Society of Professional Journalists on Tuesday A good solid yellow-journalism edgy-blogger treatment seemed in order... Newspaper and TV journalists, bloggers, university professors, and anyone who wanders in off the street interested in a fight, will get together at the News Sentinel headquarters Tuesday at 7 p.m. for an informal panel discussion of the evolving relationship between journalism and blogging, hosted by the East Tennessee Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists. Expected panelists include the editor of the News Sentinel, Jack McElroy, who has has been posting a blog of his own for some months; KnoxViews.com' creator Randy Neal, "the blogger formerly known as South Knox Bubba"; Betty Bean of the Halls Shopper News, who also pitches in on KnoxViews; and prolific blog site engineer (and UT student) Johnny Dobbins, the programmer behind the RockyTopBrigade blog-aggregation website plus a variety of personal and political blogs. SPJ past president Dorothy Bowles, a UT professor and author of Media Law in Tennessee, among other things, will be the moderator. Audience participation will be encouraged. More proof of the "informality" I mentioned: my colleague Dorothy asked me to be on the panel, even though I'm luck to get more than one blog item written a week. (Sometimes they just get out of hand and turn into lectures.) I don't even read as many local blogs as I want to. (I'm still feeling annoyed about not getting to Friday night's blogger get-together at Barley's -- and it even had beer and pizza. This time the word "professional" is involved, so I'd really better be there.) Last-minute update: We hoped the panel would also include Glenn Reynolds, author of the book An Army of Davids as well as the widely heralded instapundit.com blog, will be was able to be there after all. but a date change for the panel may have made it impossible for him to join us. Maybe a few of his thousands of readers will attend anyway, to fill him in on anything he misses. Actually, with the date so close to Thanksgiving break, UT students probably will not descend on the meeting in droves either -- which means there will be plenty of room for local bloggers, blog-readers -- or newspaper readers -- to come see what these folks look and sound like in person. Logistics: Visitors can use the News Sentinel parking lot, and should ask for directions to the community room on the first floor. The newspaper's building is off Western Avenue on News Sentinel Drive, between Middlebrook Pike and Western Avenue. 5:34:31 PM    comment []

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