It's all very well talking about building a social media strategy and the growing need for entrepreneurial journalism, but there are lots of journalists out there - good, hard news journalists with skills we as a profession don't want to lose - who are being left behind. So, a plea to those who were there: please don't run before the rest of us can walk.
And that's all very sweet and lovely - but it's very, very dangerous. Because if those people who are pushing at the edges of online journalism - the spaghetti throwers, as George Brock put it - slow down and wait for the rest of the industry to catch up, we might as well just lie down in a grave and, as a profession, die now.
This is myopia. This is only seeing the traditional publishing ecosystem, and not all the new things that are competing for our audience's time and interest (and our advertisers' cash). It's not just the social media journalists and traditional journalists in this equation. It's the untold thousands, maybe millions, of people who are using these tools to publish and consume materials. We're in a huge battle for attention, and if we're not in the places where people find interesting content, if we don't understand how people are consuming content in this new publishing environment, and creating news and journalism generally in ways that match that demand, we're history.
Sorry, Fleet Street Blues, but we can't wait.
Update: Psmith, Journalist takes on another post in similar vein
Talking about 'demand' and creating 'interesting content' is necessary, but I'm concerned it only goes so far. Taken at the extreme, does it assume that journalism in future should be solely market-driven?
I'd be interested in your view on public service journalism? What its role is and who provides it? And, crucially, who pays for it?
Obviously, this isn't just about broadcasting. We can't forget the public service role - in covering local democracy and holding public and private organisations to account etc - that has been traditionally provided by local and regional press.
People continue to want a diverse range of news and views from their media - crucially, they want to know what's going on in their neck of the woods. But this isn't a free service - that can be provided unfunded.
I'm concerned about the decline of local/regional media not because I want to shore up the media owners' monopolies and profits. Quite the contrary.
I want the digital/social media future to help democratise content. But reading the tweets and posts about the two conferences I wish I'd been able to attend last week, I'm not much clearer that anyone has been able to say, 'this is how communities can/should provide/fund their own media'.