It probably seems like ages ago, but I promise you, it’s only been three weeks or so since we met in Indianapolis.  Since then I’ve spent three days in Orlando being deposed in a defamation case (no, I’m not in trouble) and 6 days in Wales delivering a paper at a conference on the Future of Journalism (yes, there is one!).  Plus, I had to keep may day job, so those are my excuses for not getting this out to you more quickly.

We have some new members on the committee:
Mia Rhodarmer, Editor and Publisher of the Advocate-Democrat in Sweetwater, TX
Ann Augherton, Managing Editor, Catholic Herald, Arlington, Virginia
Mike Walter, President, Walter Media, Washington, DC

At our meeting in Indy we talked about the types of questions we’d like to include on the survey HQ will be sending out to members.  Proposed questions centered on topics such as how do you like training delivered (online vs. in person, travel to training vs. have training come to you), as well as the types of training, i.e. which new media skills are needed or even whether help is needed in selecting hardware and software.  We also wanted to know how great the interest was in entreprenuerial journalism, social media skills, etc.  (Kevin, I have not sent those questions to you yet, but I’ll be working on getting those to you today or tomorrow.)

Kara proposed and the rest of us agreed that we’re interested in talking to HQ about the possibility of adding a social media module to the courses offered in the newsroom training program.  Obviously, we may want to wait for the survey results before committing to developing the content, but Kara also suggested that Jeff Cutler might be an excellent choice for creating the module.

We discussed a few sessions we’d like to propose for the 2010 convention, including sessions in which multimedia journalists might show & tell – show us their work and then tell us how they accomplished it technically, we might also propose a session on multimedia time management – how does one person do it all.  We discussed a session on the increased pressures newsrooms face to make money in ways they probably wouldn’t have considered in the past, i.e. Gannett’s advertorials, a Maine TV station that let an organization pay for travel on a story, etc.