Mediactive: Why media consumers, not just creators, need to be active users.

You can get a 25 percent discount by using this code — whr09rdr — when registering.

During the Inauguration, heightened security measures will be in place across Washington, D.C., particularly in the areas where official events are taking place. These security measures, as well as tickets, permits, and credentialing requirements, will affect where you can go, what you can bring with you, and what you can do to document the Inauguration. Your location and what events are taking place there will influence what legal and other limitations you are subject to. The following information will help you understand and comply with security measures and other requirements while documenting the Inauguration.

If you’re going to be there with your camera, etc., this is invaluable information.

Lasantha Wickramatunga: And Then They Came for Me. No other profession calls on its practitioners to lay down their lives for their art save the armed forces – and, in Sri Lanka, journalism. In the course of the last few years, the independent media have increasingly come under attack. Electronic and print institutions have been burned, bombed, sealed and coerced. Countless journalists have been harassed, threatened and killed. It has been my honour to belong to all those categories, and now especially the last.

Wickramatunga was the editor of the Sri Lankan Sunday Leader, newspaper that crusaded for honor and against corruption. Please read his final column to remember why journalism remains a vital, and sometimes noble, craft.

NBPC New Media Institute 2009: The National Black Programming Consortium and its National Minority Consortia partners invite you to participate in the 4th Annual New Media Institute (NMI). The NMI is a unique professional development program working to transform producers of color from television producers into media-makers who can work seamlessly between various digital platforms. NBPC, a national, nonprofit media arts organization, has been the leading provider of Black programming on public television and a great resource for training Black media professionals for nearly 30 years. In association with the NMC, The New Media Institute was developed out of a need expressed by the producers we serve. Building upon last year’s theme of social networking and active citizenship, NMI ’09 will explore mobile journalism.

We’ll be moving over to a local arts center for the evening program. More later…

The problems people see with blogging and other conversational/social media were high on other speakers’ topic lists. In particular, worries about anonymous (or pseudonymous) online attacks came up again and again.

It’s a real issue. But it’s part of the larger issue of how we help consumers of news and information be better at separating what’s reliable and what isn’t. Here’s a slide I showed in my talk:

The point is that while anonymity is a vital tool to preserve, we should strongly encourage people to stand behind their own words. And, crucially, we should have a default position when we see anonymous speech: Don’t trust it.

In fact, when it comes to anonymous or pseudonymous personal attacks, the default position should be to actively disbelieve what we’ve read or heard. We should not give the cowards who post such things any slack at all. There are exceptions, but rare ones.

Like students everywhere, the ones I met at Aristotle University’s Department of Journalism and Mass Communication were bright and eager to figure out their future. They are heading into a journalism market dominated by what sounds to me like something of a cartel at the pro-journalism level. But Greece isn’t immune from economic realities, and it’s a reasonable bet that what’s happening to Greek media companies will look, in the end, like what’s happening in the U.S.

So, as I told them, I hope they’ll consider inventing their own jobs.

Craig Wherlock, a Brit teaching English in Greece, blogged about the day in Thessaloniki here. He points to other coverage, mostly in Greek:

- Τα ΓΙΑΤΙ και τα ΔΙΟΤΙ των ΗΜΕΡΙΔΩΝ και των ΣΥΝΕΔΡΙΩΝ
- Ανέκδοτο περί συνεδρίου συμμετοχικής δημοσιογραφίας
- Όταν τα παραδοσιακά μέσα κάνουν έφοδο στα νέα…
- Συνέδριο; Δημοσιογραφία;
- Συμμετοχική Δημοσιογραφία: Blog και Νέα Μέσα
- Δημοσιογραφία και πολίτες ΙI ή ένα συνέδριο γι’ αυτά
- Livestreaming από τη διημερίδα
- What is journalism?
- Λα-λα Λόλα να ένα blog
- New Media Conference συμπεράσματα
- Social Media Tales: ένα συνέδριο κι η σφαγή των αμάχων
- Οι δικές μου εντυπώσεις από τη “διημερίδα”

Off topic: I was lucky enough to visit the royal tombs in Vergina, not far from Thessaloniki. The director of the museum there gave several of us a private tour (including a look — no photos allowed — at Philip II’s bones) of a site that makes the word “history” come truly into focus.

I can’t wait to go back for a longer visit.