Yesterday's Chicago Journalism Town Hall held at the Hotel Allegro opened a discussion among longtime adversaries -- those in the mainstream media and those in the new media.
For the first time, we heard longtime media professionals publicly confess their fear and loathing of bloggers that attract readers and followers by "stealing" original material and writing snarky comments about those efforts. On the other hand, we heard angry bloggers and new media entrepeneurs express resentment towards those established, well-paid media personalities, one commenter saying he "hopes to kill" Chicago area media stardom with his expanding online efforts.
We heard confessions of guilt from newspaper and broadcast professionals for not anticipating the effects of the "online freight train moving at 20 mph." We heard professionals say they've been "victimized" by online citizen journalists who, in their amateur status and hobby writing, steal from their efforts.
We heard bloggers share their resentment of being treated as second-rate journalists and the humbling battle to even be added to press release lists and have query calls returned.
From my perspective as a member of the 350 or so in the audience, the discussion with the 14 featured panelists was informative, enlightening and eye-opening. One thing I found is it's not only conservative bloggers in Illinois that are struggling emotionally and financially to keep excited and enthused about the writing we do on a daily basis. Yesterday, I found out it's an industry-wide plague, with few, very few exceptions.
The town hall featuring Chicago media biggies like Carol Marin, Carlos Hernandez Gomez, John Callaway and Eric Zorn, will be broadcast on cable CAN-TV in March. We'll put the details on the Illinois Review calendar for your reference.
UPDATE: If you can't wait for the broadcasts, you could skim Chicago Public Radio's live blog found HERE. Thanks, Medill School of Journalism's Poynter Blog for the link!
Hang with us folks, we're all in for a bumpy ride on so many fronts --including huge changes in the media front. Illinois Review will do all we can to be here as a conservative community center venue to help work our way through it.
