Ian Valentine

I recently attended the Campus Progress National Conference in Washington, DC. The conference consisted of three days of training, brainstorming, and discussion, as well as the appearance of a long list of great speakers. Nancy Pelosi, Kathleen Sebelius, John Oliver, Van Jones, and John Podesta spoke, just to name a few. Oh yeah, and Bill Clinton was there too.

This was my first time at CPNC, and I really enjoyed it. I did the journalism track, which included a day of workshops and critiques from professional journalists, and another day of panels and workshops that focused on particular skills and issues. I got a real sense of how rapidly the journalism industry is changing, and how both media outlets and individual journalists are adjusting. I had been considering going to journalism school in a few years, but some of the comments made by the journalists at the conference have me rethinking that option.

Many of the journalists at the conference pointed out that many successful journalists started out simply by diving in and reporting, rather than going to journalism school. David Schimke, editor-in-chief of the Utne Reader, compared attending journalism school to taking classes to learn how to play an instrument – it's one way, but not the only way.

I especially enjoyed the panel about independent media, which featured a colorful journalist named Al Giordano. Giordano runs the website Narco News, which reports on the War on Drugs and associated issues in the Americas. When the topic of discussion turned to funding models for news media, Giordano said that when a large donor to his website threatened to pull his funding because he didn't like the site's coverage, he told the donor to "fuck off!" And when someone from the audience asked a question about NPR, he described it as "effete snobbery."

And then there were the speakers. There were a few who were less than stellar (Kathleen Sebelius' speech about health care was a bit... clinical), but most of them were great. John Oliver was undoubtedly the best speaker. He went back and forth between the serious and the frivolous, never letting the crowd go too long without a laugh. He even repeated the word "asshole" just to make the ASL interpreter sign it again... only to discover that there was a kid in the front row. Brilliant.

Overall, the conference was a great success, and I had a lot of fun. Can't wait until next year!