1. Blogging and PR: On my panel, when the issue of how blogs might be used for public relations was raised, one example I mentioned was that of BusinessPundit: Why American Express "Gets" Blogging, in which BusinessPundit and a couple of other bloggers were paid to travel to an American Express Open event and then write whatever they wanted about it. There were questions to the panel as to some of the ethical issues surrounding this: doesn't this create issues or journalistic integrity, along with some other very large possible controversies, to have bloggers paid by a sponsor for their work? I think it depends on whether such an instance is to be categorized as "journalism" or "public-relations." So, in other words, I'm not sure what the answer is.

2. Paul Maidment, who heads up Forbes.com, related a revealing story during his own panel: He said that he had participated in mock business start-up exercises with his staffs, and various other staffs of news organizations, at business schools over the course of his career. The kind of set up where a team is assigned a product, and markets, finances, and sells it, or plans to do those, all in the course of one weekend. Typical business school stuff. Well, Paul said that in every such exercise in which he's ever participated the most risk-averse group of "players" were the journalists. Say what you will about their political proclivities, but they are highly conservative in temperament. I thought this was intriguing. Bloggers it seems, are much more risk-seeking. Perhaps that's a much more useful construct for thinking about the two different communities than the usual political fault-lines.

3. Who reports better, subject-matter experts, or journalists? This was a topic of a bit of discussion and I didn't have a chance to throw my two cents in. Basically, my thoughts are:

1. Subject-matter-experts can get bogged down in a lot of technical detail that leaves much to be desired and they can frequently overlook aspects of the subject that are mundane to them, but fascinating to laypeople.

2. Journalists usually play up any kind of sensationalizing angle possible: disease, war, death, pestilence, sex, scandal. I think we all know this. However, they are often more talented at relating a certain subject to layfolks.

Which leads me to my conclusion:

3. It doesn't matter so long as whoever is doing the reporting can explain what is happening to the intended audience and do so in a clear way.

I think that the simplicity of that "insight" is counterbalanced by the infrequency with which such actual reporting occurs.

Perhaps this has relation to comparisons between dramatic film and documentaries. The average drama might be much more entertaining than the average documentary. The analogy is that journalists have to learn a good bit about a subject before writing about it, like actors. On the other hand, good, well-made documentaries, can be even better than dramas, and part of that is probably because you know it's real! [and I'm thinking Hoop Dreams, here, not you-know-what by you-know-whom]. Notably though, while subject matter experts can produce journalism or reporting by themselves, usually a documentary requires someone who is skilled in film-making. So there's a team aspect of having both talents present that is not to be overlooked.

I'll go for two more analogies: the generalist vs the specialist in intelligence analysis. One can miss the forest, the other the trees. Sometimes both are important.

Also, the idea of the "directed telescope" in command and control theory, a concept I first wrote about here: Rummy Gets a "Directed Telescope." I've always been enamored of that concept and I think it's worth a visit to that old post if you are interested. The analogies are apt.

More post-conference thoughts tomorrow!