The College Tour

It's coming up on that time of year again when, as my friends and family remind me, I spend too much time doing too much work for free. Each year at this time I head out on the road to visit with college journalists and their instructors to share my thoughts on media.
I don't get paid for this work. But I don't care. As I remind my friends and family, there's more to life than money. And there's nothing I enjoy more all year than the time I spend with future journalists.

Later this week I'll be heading to Oxford, Mississippi, where I'm the keynote speaker at this year's Southeast Journalism Conference. I've titled my little speech "Brace Yourself: What life is like in journalism in 2008; Why you're not ready for it; What you can do about it." I'll also be joining a few newspaper executives for a panel on the future of that industry.

After that I'll stop back home for a few days before heading to the Midwest to visit some clients and attend the annual meeting of the professional advisory committee at Northwest Missouri State University's department of mass communication.

By mid-March, I'll be back in New York and attending the College Media Advisers national convention. I'm co-hosting an all-day session on multimedia reporting and Web-first publishing on March 13. And I'm serving on two panels on March 17.

If you're going to be at any of these events, please stop by and say hello.

With all this activity in the next few weeks, I expect my blog posting to be rather infrequent. I will, however, share my thoughts about the next generation of journalists when my schedule gets back to normal.

tags: journalism, b2b, media, trade press, magazines, newsletters, business media, journalism education