Scenes from the FAIR fair: Meet the media, just don’t touch

Steve Safran October 12th, 2006

I like the concept of the FAIR Media Council. Have gatherings with the public and members of the media. Promote understanding. All very bloggy. Lots more regions should do this. And the 150-200 or so people who showed up all had a wonderful and bloggy feel about them. (Mostly, anyway.) Some pictures from the day, along with a quote from each:

Dan Shelley, WCBSTV.com. (Yes, it’s in black and white. I hit the B&W option in iPhoto by accident, but I really like the way it looks. Gives Dan a little extra gravitas.)
“I look at what’s happening in our (online media) world today as extremely liberating. No longer are we limited by a strict format. We’re free to give you what it is, when you say you want it. (The notion of mere) convergence is dead – it’s now ‘Converge or Die.’”

Bart Feder, The Feedroom
“The broadband world is bigger than the cable world now. That is what has put you in control. The true convergence will happen when it breaks down to a true content play. The dirty secret is – the media companies won’t do something unless they can make (immediate) money.”


Ben Mevorach, 1010 WINS Newsradio NYC
“Even though we’re on the AM dial in an iPod world, we have people who come to us for news. When we send reporters, they take still cameras, and they have to take pictures and upload them and put them on the website. We now allow our reporters to do firsthand accounts – which they could never do on the air.”

Bob Cox, MediaBloggers Association
(This was during my panel, so I don’t have contemporaneous notes for quotes. Bob presented a solid overview of the legal challenges facing the blogosphere. Disclosure: I am on the board of the MBA.)

Liza Sabater, culturekitchen.com
“Blogs are changing the responsibility and process of writing and reading… I believe blogging pushes people to look at relationships between readers and the “objective” media.”

Photos taken by Safran, except for photos of Cox and Sabater, graciously taken by Dan Shelley