The weekly blogging meeting, 7-8:30, at the Berkman Center this week is being recorded by a team from ABC News for Nightline. Our topic is what’s on the record and what’s off the record, and, of course, this time the discussion is entirely on the record.

It’s a bizarre experience. The bit Sony camera gets swung around to point at the person speaking, changing everything. It’s attention made physical.

I’m worried because the conversation keeps talking about the question in terms of the tiny handful of bloggers who view themselves as doing some type of journalism. That’s how the mainstream media already tends to view us. I hate to see us reinforce that.

That aside, it’s a good conversation. So far… (I particularly enjoyed Lisa Williams comments about not publishing information she doesn’t own, e.g., conversations with co-workers, and about the state of grown-uppedness of our culture in terms of the media.) [posted at 7:30pm]

Jim Moore points out that we’re not going to resolve anything tonight, nor do we expect to. We’re engaged in a continuing conversation. That’s the way we humans work.

Lisa: Conversations about blogs tend to devolve into conversations about fear. She’s amazed at how kind people are in the blogosphere. [I agree. Underneath the links are people who are interested in the same things and, more important, interested in – care about – one another.]

Erica Geroge of the Berkman says, in response to a comment, that the media don’t cover average people — their (our) cares, interests, etc. But bloggers do. [Badabing. Exactly.] [posted at 7:55]

At 8, we turn to topics more typical of the Thursday night group. E.g., Michael Feldman of The Dow Brigade talks briefly about interesting ways to do a Blogging 101 tutorial, using some free tools to do it multimedially.

Categories: Uncategorized dw