Stir it up: mediabistro circus serves up versatile group of media executives
During the mediabistro circus conference last week in New York City, I noticed a few people clutching their BlackBerry as it were an oxygen tank and they were just about to reach the summit of Mount Everest. Typical, right? Not exactly.
Unlike most media conferences these days, BlackBerry addicts were in the minority. For the most part, the two-day conference, which drew about 200 media executives, was able to hold one’s attention without resorting to a hand-held device. Content is still king, and mediabistro circus did not disappoint.
Attendees from ESPN, HarperCollins, IDG, the Los Angeles Times, Money-Media and Time Inc. Interactive — to name just some of the media companies represented — got a healthy dose of information (and take away) on all things digital. Topics of discussion centered on blogging, online video, social media, mobile media and Web design. The conference kicked off with a panel titled, ‘Publishing: From Print to Digital (a title similar to a new show premiering this week on ScribeMedia.org; we didn’t have a mind-meld beforehand with the folks at mediabistro, honest).
Toggling back and forth from the main sessions to the (limited) exhibit hall, I had the opportunity to talk with several guest speakers about the digital gestalt.
Jim Roberts, editor of digital news for The New York Times, was the Keynote speaker the second day. He spent a good deal of his time talking about the development of the Times’ political coverage online (natch, considering the interminable U.S. presidential campaign) but he also addressed the overall challenges facing digital news editors. Before heading back to the Times’ midtown office we sat down for a wide-ranging interview that touched on TimesSelect, a subscription-only service that the Times Co. scrapped last year, the economy and whether print media is on the side of history.
I’ll be releasing a series of podcast interviews shortly.
Matthew Schwartz is Senior Editor of ScribeMedia.org and host of the WebTV series, From Print to Digital.
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