conferences

I'm quoting economist Paul Romer at the top of my presentation Monday to the World Editors Forum in Moscow. Romer has said many smart things, but one of my favorites is this: "A crisis is a terrible thing to waste."

There is a sense of crisis in the newspaper industry. FTM quotes Merrill Lynch analyst Lauren Rich Fine: "We are now concluding that the fundamental outlook for newspapers is even more challenging than we had previously thought; in essence profits generated from an almost monopolistic position within classifieds is being eliminated as the core listings business (for newspapers) could become a loss leader for other online classified models. ... it is a stinker of an industry."

One of my hobbies is visiting military museums when I travel. War is crisis, and the technological progress you can see in military hardware over the course of World War I and II is stunning. Crisis forces reluctant institutions to change.

We need this crisis, and now that we have it, it's our responsibility to find constructive ways to respond. I don't have all the answers, but I believe I have a line on some things we should all be doing.

I'll be talking in Moscow about building and facilitating online community. I'm setting aside the term "citizen journalism," which is a lightning rod for pointless and destructive debate. Instead, I want to talk about social capital, civic engagement, connections, empowerment and --surprise -- improving print journalism. I'll talk about how new and old media can be friends, how the "World Wide" Web can be hyperlocal, and how citizens and pro journalists can help one another.

I may post a blog item or two during the week ... or not. My boat-anchor laptop is not coming along. I prefer to travel light. I'll be in Moscow Saturday-Thursday, then in St. Petersburg Friday-Saturday.

Looking over the agenda for the 13th World Editors Forum, which will be held this summer in Moscow, Jeff Jarvis reacts: "I smell fear." Well, I do too. Not everywhere, but in many newsrooms there's a real fear of citizen journalism, ranging from a concern that it will somehow undermine quality and credibility to a paycheck-centered fear that publishers are conspiring to lay off reporters in favor of unpaid citizen labor.

But I will be there telling a tale of hope, not of fear. Opening the process of journalism so that it's participatory, so that we listen more effectively, so that no one is disempowered, so that we genuinely reflect a community in conversation with itself leads to better journalism, higher readership of professionally produced content, and a bond with the community that newspapers have not enjoyed for more than a quarter century.

Earlier this week I was in Orlando at the multifaceted NAA Marketing Conference, which included Connections, the new-media conference. I got a kick out of Clyde Bentley of the University of Missouri -- a temple of big-J journalism if ever there was one -- declaring that editors are poor judges of what's important to real people. How did Clyde discover this? Through the myMissourian.com project, which asked members of the community to write for a weekly TMC product. The information priorities of consumers are sometimes the inverse of the information priorities of editors.

So, who's right? Consumers or editors? I think that if journalists are that far out of phase with the public, a realignment is in order. But it's not going to happen unless professional journalists are willing to open the windows and let in a little fresh air. Be not afraid. It's an opportunity to do better work.

I'm a sucker for international travel, so I've signed on to speak at the Citygate Forum in Stockholm at the end of April, and at the World Editors Forum in Moscow in June. In both cases I'll be talking about the new, participatory, Web-powered participatory community interaction thing ... and avoiding the baggage-laden "citizen journalism." And I won't mention "witness contributors."

I've never been to either city. I expect Moscow to be infinitely more challenging. I've never met anyone from a Scandinavian country who didn't speak better English than some of my neighbors. Moscow, on the other hand, uses an alphabet that at this point makes less sense to me than 中国文本.

Я надеюсь выучить быстро. And I intend to get lost in the subways, which are legendary for their splendor.

I'm having to reach into my pocket for the Moscow trip, so I'm available for consulting gigs along the way.