Clay Shirky‘s plane was cancelled so Dan Gillmor is filling in. Dan is talking about “We Media,” the idea that journalism is becoming a conversation, or, he suggests, perhaps more like a seminar in which the journalist is the “sherpa guide.” Says Dan: “My readers know more than I do.” Maybe you have to be a journalist to appreciate how radical that statement is.

He points to the fact that increasingly the full transcripts of interviews are now being posted by the interviewees — e.g., Donald Rumsfeld — as a way of providing context for comments that the journalist might have misrepresented.

Of all the tools Dan sees emerging, “Blogging is the coolest.” He cites Doc, Ernie the Attorney and Glenn Fleishman‘s 802.11 blog as examples of “passionate semi-amateur” journalist blogs. “The next time there’s a major event in Tokyo…before the professional press is able to scramble their photographers to the scene, there will be 500 photos on the web.” Then, Dan says, “journalists will sit up and say ‘Holy shit!'”.

He ends with a plea for activism against the Congressional/Hollywood attack on the Net.

In sum, he says that in ten years “I may know as much from what other people [bloggers] are finding than as what the editors of the NY Times tell me.”

The great thing about Dan is that he so joyfully embraces technologies that most other journalists view as a threat.

I asked a badly-put question about what will happen when electronic book hardware is commonplace. How will this affect the line between journalism and blogging? Dan answered that he doesn’t think that that will have much effect. But I think it will, for it will deprive traditional journalism of the advantage that gives it so much value: the capital to put ink to paper millions of times a day. Without that, the New York Times is just a brand, and brands can be relatively easily eroded in a reputation-based economy. I think.

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