Thanks again to everyone who came together this Wednesday to attend The Pitch. It’s really cool to me that people are showing up and enjoying themselves, and that I can help provide the forum for that to happen.
This time around, just shy of 30 people showed up, and we had a few great giveaways from our sponsors at the Window Media Center TV on your PC group: free shirts and Windows Media Center remotes for all attendees, and two free copies of Vista.
Here’s the roundup of what people were saying and are saying about the event:
Over at Sn0tty.com, Snotty McSnotterson came up with a mammoth post about the event and the thoughts that came afterward:
It might sound a bit dry, but if you’re reading this right now, you probably get a lot of your news online, too–so at some point, this will affect you, if it hasn’t already…
Justin Carder put some of this thoughts and talking points from The Pitch up on Neighborlogs:
A journalism powerhouse like Tracy Record still has the benefit of stealth on her side as her West Seattle Blog builds its business…
Paul Balcerak added his thoughts at Wired Journalist:
For my part, I threw in the caveat that yes, they can compete, but only if they stop thinking of themselves as newspapers and start thinking of themselves as news sources…
I took a number of photos myself, which are up on FlickR here.
Mark Briggs wrote up a nice summary of the topic and our conclusion over at Journalism 2.0:
The collective answer at the end of the night was, yes, it’s possible for an established newspaper to provide better hyperlocal coverage than a neighborhood blog…
And there was plenty of discussion on Twitter throughout the night, you can find it all by searching for the #pitch1208 event hashtag. Some of the highlight tweets:
joshc: @wnalyd if someone calling @westseattleblog a gossip site wasn’t enough to instigate a knife fight, nothing else could. #pitch1208
lifeasart: Cheers @jasonp107, #pitch1208 was a lot of fun, the old klunker up top is still chuggin’ away on some of the ideas brought up & I like that.
greenergrad: my head is still reeling from #pitch1208. thanks, @jasonp107!
jseattle: #pitch1208 was good times – tks @jasonp107. Conversation took a turn during rice bowls after with @seattlestmvb and @scottdurham
westseattleblog: great job by @jasonp107 organizing a fascinating #pitch1208 even though an episode of Geraldo/Maury failed to break out
adamloving: thanks @jasonp107 for #pitch1208, an interesting discussion about local bloggers vs. local media. I enjoyed it!
waderockett: @jessicalomelin a recent journalism grad, was held to established standards for copy but in new media (blogs, Twitter, podcasts). #pitch1208
markbriggs: #pitch1208 Tracy says they consider West Seattle blog more of a broadcast model than print. (It’s her background, too.)
Once again, THANK YOU to everyone who showed up. I had an awesome time, and I’m already looking forward to the next event. I hope to see you there, too.
Eat Sleep Publish is a Seattle-based blog that explores the difficulties and opportunities currently facing the publishing industry. 
{ 6 comments… read them below or add one }
This was such a great event–thank you so much for hosting! It took me the same amount of time to read my mammoth post as it did to sit through all three Lord of the Rings movies, so *apologies*. But I appreciate the brain nudge. Looking forward to the next one!
Thanks for the link – somehow I hadn’t seen Snotty’s roundup, though Justin tweeted his, and our format doesn’t really have a place for me to share my musings about anything – it’s about the neighborhood, not about us. Although the link to this will go on our “about” page – which is like the oldschool “clippings.” Side note because this will be published on our site sometime later today, a convergence of sorts and relevant to Wednesday night’s topic: Two local weekly newspapers recently cut the position of the veteran who had edited them, citing financial reasons. Said ex-editor contacted us. Today he’s writing a guest editorial on the Viaduct options just unveiled – we haven’t really done formal “editorials” previously but we’re open to almost anything, and we also are publishing standalones (in what you might call the old “op-ed” format) from the two West Seattleites on the Stakeholders Committee (I e-mailed both to invite them to do so). Funny how the wheels turn.
Argh! Haven’t had time to write up my thoughts but the stuff I’ve been reading has been great. A terrific evening with lots to think about. I’ll try to post something soon.
Was this event recorded, for those of us that couldn’t make it?
David – yes, I made a recording of (most) of the event, and it will go out to the e-mail list sometime soon.
Yes, thank you for hosting! It was an excellent evening of thought-provoking discussion.
I really dug Lucid, too – great choice of venues.