We Media Conference - Day One

Posted February 7th, 2007 by Robert Cox
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First, I was in DC for the last couple of days - mostly to spend some time meeting with folks at the Project for Excellence in Journalism. We've agreed to work with them to develop their newly launched news index. We are going to provide the data for the "blog platform" portion of their index:

Due to their structure, blogs will be considered separately from the rest of the index, with its own list of top stories. We are currently in talks with Robert Cox and the Media Bloggers Association to develop an index in based in the MBA’s membership of more than 1000 bloggers. The coding scheme will be designed to fit the structure of the blogs but will also be designed in a way so that its results can be compared to those of the main index each week. We plan to launch the bloggers index in spring, 2007.

I also had a chance to stop by the DC Courthouse and check in on Lance Dutson and Eric Brewer who are live-blogging the . While there I had a chance to chat with Jane Hamsher who, for someone who just had surgery, looked fabulous and seemed full of energy. She must be doing something right. We agree to talk when the proceedings were not underway - hopefully next week when I get back to New York.

Later that day I met with folks at The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press how we might work together to support blogger speech.

I got back to New York late Tuesday and then turned around Wednesday and left for sunny Miami. When my plane left New York this morning it was 11 degrees with a strong wind that made it feel like 10 below zero. When I landed in Miami a few hours later it was 80 degrees and sunny. Thank God for the We Media conference!

Last night was the official cocktail party and a Knight Foundation dinner (to which I was not invited). There was also an unofficial Miami Bloggers dinner organized by Scrapblog and - not surprisingly - that was the most fun event of the evening.

Fabrice Florin of NewsTrust took put up a flickr slideshow. I took the second to last photo of Fabrice's absolutely horrible rental car (I have the same damn PT Cruiser but in gray...thanksfully). No comment on the last photo with JD saluting Fabrice.