Another week, another mashup of journalists publicly stumbling their way through the tough questions facing their industry, emerging on the other side of a two-hour session essentially where they started; with resigned, puzzled looks on their faces.   And then of course, a bunch of other journalists inevitably run back to their laptops to write about it.   We must forgive them of course, because although the formal industry is in dire straights, never has the field of journalism been such a rich battleground of ideas, open questions and opportunities to ruminate over.

This week, another chapter in this Mitchner-length saga unfolded; this time out west, amongst the cool shadows of the Rocky Mountains.  A panel of “old guard” journalists met out in Apsen, Colorado at the Ideas Festival to take another go at the new age  question of “How do we save journalism in it’s traditional form (a.k.a. ourselves)?”

Politico summed up the event nicely yesterday, capped with a snarky headline that could only have been written by an online-only news outlet, “Save Journalism?  Beats us panel says“.  But reading deeper into the article, that’s not actually what was said.  In fact, I’d argue that this panel of traditional journalists came the closest to a “mea culpa” moment that I’ve encountered.

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