Dinner has ended, Helen Thomas has spoken briefly, and now, members of the panel are making their initial comments. I’ve set up an IRC channel, irc://irc.freenode.net/mgp2006 where people can get together and talk about the conference. Paul Bass has written a post about Helen’s first talk. For more information about Wednesday's talk click on read more. To read entries about other sessions, click on media.

A lot of the initial discussions are about community, about people online being ‘users’ and not ‘readers’. There is talk about doing away with the idea of ‘audience’ to be replaced with a sense of participation. One person comments that ‘The way you connect people to democracy is you give them a voice, and the way you give them a voice is give them something to do.’

The other theme is about verifiable facts that hold the powerful accountable, as opposed to being weapons of mass distraction.

Who will pay for investigative journalism?
Who will hold the government accountable?
If someone does hold the government accountable, how will we know to believe it?

Update

The first question is about the media rolling over and not covering the story of election fraud in Florida in 2000. The panelists take umbrage to ‘the myth’ that the media has rolled over.

The second question is about polarization. Is the news becoming more polarized, conservatives only reading conservative sources, liberals only reading liberal sources? There is talk about RSS feeds, blogrolls, and the importance of media encouraging people not to simply think in terms of Red and Blue.

There is a discussion about circulation fraud. If newspapers won’t report about fraud, how can we trust them? Jay Rosen talks about how this reflects larger problems of people trying to avoid the issue of circulation decline, of trying to keep up appearances during a time of newspaper decline. Another interesting comment is that circulation is down but readership is up because of articles being read online.

The question of election fraud comes back up as an issue that a lot of people are concerned about and a feeling that the press is not covering it. Jay Rosen suggests that this is perhaps an issue that is beyond what the press can effectively cover.

The conversation returns to the journalistic conversation, such as people from the Washington Post or the Boston Globe spending time in online chats about their stories. An interesting comment about how the web is a more ‘intimate’ medium.

Update 2

“I think too many of you are too hung up on the delivery mechanism”

Personal opinion: It feels like there is a certain amount of us/them antagonism/mentality between activists and some bloggers and ‘the mainstream media’ as an underlying dynamic here. There is a certain defensiveness I’m hearing from the panel. One interesting comment on this is that most news is local and that is the news most readers are particularly interested in.

Question: Can you talk about partnerships between schools and news and information organizations? Folks from the Globe talk about some efforts that they have been doing.

Update 3

Discussion about ethnic journalism: A woman from an organization of ethnic papers in New York City talks about how there are 28 foreign language dailies over 300 foreign language weeklies in New York City. She goes on to comment that one in four people use ethnic media as a primary source of information.

The discussion also goes to civic engagement and the difficulties of teaching civic engagement in school. Jay Rosen goes on to say, "George Bush has been really good for civic engagement"