Chicago Media Future Conference

It's 2009, and the people in the room are relatively sophisticated -- don't waste their time asking five people to define "what news is."

Whenever old media bitches that it's no longer the public's conscience but somehow has a right to be, it's the equivalent of telling the public that they're intellectual children with no innate capacity for rational thought.

Our emerging newsrooms will be staffed in part by a generation of newshounds -- yes, journalists -- who've taken on the task of news delivery through the Web on their own.