Tweet me? Tweet you!

I walked into the first session, "The Future of Journalism: Where We've Been, Where We're Going," about 20 minutes late. Leonard Downie, VP At Large with The Washington Post, was at the podium presenting.

It felt a lot like a laundry list of options for how papers could make it given the economy and transition journalism is going through. He talked about non-profit and low-profit possibilities. He talked about a lot of other stuff I'm sure, but I was distracted by the fact that he read from his printed speech at the podium. I wanted to be more involved with him and his presentation, but I could not see his entire face, as it was tilted downward toward his paper.

I decided to check in with technology. There had been a social networking session the previous day for pre-registrants who wanted info on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn (Justine and Patricia had attended) and I wanted to see if anyone was posting. Turns out a couple of people were! I'd read postings "covering" events via Twitter, but I'd never been at the event being covered. It was a little surreal to hear the speaker then watch tweet post referring to the speaker by his @name. The '@' will be the new quotation mark. So bizarre.

After 'following' the other tweeters and looking up their professional info, it felt strange to connect with a journalist this way. We read stories, make connections to reporters through their bylines or columns and get a sense of their voices over time. 140 characters or less (usually with the speaker's @name and #hashmarks added so that means way less than 140 characters) doesn't give you a lot of time to hear the voice of the reporter. For one guy posting, he didn't even have his news organization posted on his profile. It really felt removed from journalism, and there are those who would argue for and against the idea that tweets are journalism, but I could appreciate that I was a member of an audience and through Twitter I could communicate with another member about what we're listening to in real time. In a minute or two I could post a comment about what was just said. Those in the room of 100-150 people who were following me via laptop or cellphone could get that comment, then turn around and respond, argue, refer or agree (and ReTweet!) with me. It was almost as good as leaning to my friend to whisper some comment, but this time I whispering it to the audience-and beyond.

Another perk to adding these communication tools to the sessions was connecting socially with other posters. I made professional connections online, then face-to-face connections when I sought them out afterwards. See that, journalism? We're transitioning, and it's not all bad.