Democracy & Independence- towards a new media, or what?

For the next few days I'll be blogging the Democracy & Independence Conference, where something called the Media Giraffe Project is throwing the somewhat more enlightened elements of the regular media with those considered the most responsible of the citizen journalists and bloggers (or those able to afford the registration fee) with media educators and other people thrown in.

A whole lot of people are here to see what happens.  Will this conference provide any answer to the problem of the media?

Even with Helen Thomas opening the conference, I'm not sure anyone's gotten to asking the right questions. The incorruptible Helen Thomas started the conference this evening with a short reading (I was 15 minutes late and missed it).  In Thomas' generously long period for questions -- and I think this is still before a lot of people arrive for the sessions starting tomorrow -- I heard tons of basic criticism of the establishment media's failures (primarily to hold the Bush administration accountable for its lies), I heard a fair amount of animosity, distaste, or disdain  toward blogs for not having the alleged standards of the regular organizations, and I heard some praise of the New York Times and Washington Post for doing the reporting they are doing, and criticism of the public for not listening to anything they don't want to hear.

No one's asked yet if there might be a problem that our media is literally bought and paid for by corporations, which are (again literally, reading the laws) owned and controlled by the rich.

But yes, I'm biased toward reader-supported news such as Narco News and a very few other outlets such as The NewStandard.

Update: It will take me forever to decompress and make useful mention of news from the conference here, especially since I picked up some volunteer and possibly-paid web work at the conference.

Let me just mention that our Al Giordano is well-remembered in Massachusetts, with one resident and attendant calling him the best journalist to work in Western Massachusetts. Also, lots of the cooler people I ran into already read Narco News, and one journalism professor at UMass (so popular I never got into her class) wrote out a check to the Fund for Authentic Journalism.

There's news and ideas I want to bring back to the NarcoSphere, but for now I refer you to Jemima Kiss for the best general blogging of the conference.