1. My very involved co-worker shared a piece of advice that her mother had given her before the trip: "Keep your options open. Professional conferences are a great place to catch."
Of course at first I was feeling like this was sound advice but later I discovered that all of the men in journalism, the decent ones at least, like all the other men in the world, are either taken or gay... and for whatever reason, you can usually tell their sexual orientation by their career choices: Sports reporters are straight, broadcast journalists are usually straight for the most part, and everyone else is gay- especially arts and entertainment writers. Clearly this can't be the golden rule but it proved to be very true throughout this week.
2. People just don't get new media. As I mentioned before, I was worked extra hard this weekend. I spent hours on my feet introducing our site, letting people know that we'll be launching next month. It was frightening to see how many professional and aspiring journalists just don't get New Media. People kept asking us if we were going to have some sort of print component or if we were a blog. A certain blogger at another online publication was wary of us because in his eyes we represented "the competition"- an old school print journalism archetype that doesn't translate well onto the web. We want to work with these people and they're running from us.
I think if I heard the question "Are you broadcast or print?" one more time I was going to scream. But if I had a dollar for every time my answer "Neither. New media," was met with confusion, I'd be rich (and therefore smiling again). Kinda sad.
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