I am in Seattle today attending Day 1 of the Journalism That Matters event: “Re-Imagining News & Community in the Pacific Northwest,” which runs from today through Sunday.

Twitter hashtag: #jtmpnw, and I’m @jessdrkn.

This “un-conference” intends to explore new relationships between journalism and communities. This event is unlike traditional events or conferences with line-ups of experts telling attendess what they are doing — this is about attendees talking to each other.

I am hosting a table for my website on hyperlocal and community news start-ups, InOtherNews.us, and for the National Association of Hispanic Journalists, of which I’m a director.

Seattle and the Northwest has become a hotbed of community/hyperlocal startup activity.  Some participants at this event are:

• Seattle City Club
• The B-Town Blog (from Burien)
• The Salish Sea Network
• The Tyee
• West Seattle Blog
• Xconomy
• YES! Magazine

Other event attendees setting up their tables alonside me in the commons area are:

• Asian American Journalists Association
• Cascadia Times
• Common Language Project
• Countywide Community Forums
• Department of Commnications, University of Washington
• Instivate
• KBCS-FM
• Knight Commission on the Information Needs of Communities in Democracy
• KUOW Public Insight Network
• LocalHealthGuide/Seattle
• Master of Communication in Digital Media, U of W
• Media Island International
• Natural Oregon
• News 21
• Pedro De Valdivia — an artist who uses trash or discarded items for his Modern-Ecoism work
• Reclaim the Media
• Seattle Times
• Sustainable Seattle
• Washington Coalition for Open Government
• Washington News Council

Jessica Durkin is the founder of http:InOtherNews.us, a site that tracks independent community, local and regional news start-ups. She is interested in entrepreneurial journalism and the new paradigm. She is the mid-atlantic director (Region 3) of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists.

I recently appeared on the TV show Beat the Press to discuss the brave new world of reporting in a totally networked world (bah-dum-dum-ching!)

Here’s me talking about the various ways reporters use social networking sites like Facebook:

I’m curious to know your thoughts on this subject, dear readers. What do you think: has Facebook really changed anything?

Emily Sweeney is a staff reporter at The Boston Globe. You can follow her on Twitter (@emilysweeney) and find her on Facebook, among other places.

There’s been a lot of discussion about social media policies lately. Media organizations are slowly taking charge and outlining how their employees should use Facebook, Twitter and the like. Here’s a sampling of social media policies adopted by news organizations:

- Washington Post (via PaidContent)

- Roanoke Times

- BBC

- Associated Press (PDF – via Wired)

For more examples, check out this database of social media policies.

We’d love to hear your thoughts on this, dear readers. Does your news organization have a social media policy?  If so, tell us about it (and if you can provide a link to it, even better!)

Emily Sweeney is a staff reporter at The Boston Globe. You can follow her on Twitter  (@emilysweeney) and find her on Facebook: www.facebook.com/spikeyem

Las Vegas TV station KWU apparently has decided to react to the drop in advertising dollars many news operations are experiencing by product placement on its newscasts.  Anchors recently delivered the news with iced coffees from a popular fast-food franchise on their desks.

As Angela Grant points out on News Videographer:

“In my opinion, this conflicts with several points in SPJ’s Code of Ethics “Act Independently” section:

·         Avoid conflicts of interest, real or perceived.

·         Remain free of associations and activities that may compromise integrity or damage credibility.

·         Deny favored treatment to advertisers and special interests and resist their pressure to influence news coverage.

Certainly pressures are building as news organizations adapt to the shift in the way our audiences want to receive the news. But this smacks of at least the appearance of advertisers influencing news content. This also points out  why it’s so important for  SPJ to continue to push ethics at this time of change. We need to maintain a watchdog approach and be vigilant to make sure the high standards we have set over the past century do not erode.

A couple of questions asked by Randy Brown’s class last night still have me thinking today.

Both related to quality and ethics.

What happens to quality, one young man asked, when you’re covering breaking news in this immediate on-line world, and all you have is, say the camera on your cell phone?

I told him about the debates raging in our industry over high-end vs. low-end equipment, best illustrated in hilarious and insightful videos by Andy Dickinson and Cyndy Green.

But I told them that the demand for quality sometimes overlooks the news value.

Arguably, the most notable news video of my generation was shot with an 8mm home movie camera by a dressmaker named Abraham Zapruder. He captured the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. It launched thousands of arguments and decades of controversy.

It’s shaky, not great quality even by the standards of the day.  But Life magazine beat the television networks in getting the rights to it and publishing stills of the movie.   This same Life magazine had a reputation for carrying the best of photojournalism, also raced to buy Zapruder’s home movie.  It had news value.

Today, CNN’s I-Report wants your cell phone video

News value has a way of trumping pixel counts or, back in the day, the quality of film.

It really should be about the news.

Which is closely related to a young woman’s question about what I thought was the single most important lesson for journalists.  That was a tough one.  There are so many.

It took me about three seconds to say that the more the business changes, the more it stays the same.

Journalism ethics, I hope, will survive all the changes.

Without high ethics to seek the truth, minimize harm and act independently, we are no better than some of the silly videos uploaded to You Tube or idol chatter on Twitter, or MySpace or Facebook.

There needs to be somewhere in every community where people know they can get information they trust – no matter how it’s delivered, or how that delivery changes over the years.