With retrenchment and job reductions — oh, let’s call them what they really are: mass firings — as subtext, three of the more influential clubs associated with the newspaper industry held their annual conventions last week. There were hopeful twists amid fear and loathing.
The Society for News Design and the Associated Press Managing Editors produced buzzworthy sites with reports, Twitter feeds, Flickr streams, blogs and video from cohabitated conferences at Red Rock Resort in Vegas. The Online News Association followed with a disappointingly dense site from crowded festivities at the dowager Capital Hilton in Washington.
We were in Vegas with the Elvis impersonators, Robin Leach, a magician and contortionists who provided metaphor for the news landscape. Just in time, we arrived back in Washington for a crowded, but surprisingly predictable program at ONA, where most of the serious business was done in the lobby bar. By comparison, here’s what you did or didn’t miss:
