Thanks, Rob. Most interesting. You picked out the reason I had these recommendations for CNN: http://journalism.nyu.edu/pubzone/weblogs/pressthink/2010/03/31/what_cnn_should.html 8 pm: Thunder on the Right. A news show hosted by an extremely well informed, free-thinking and rational liberal that mostly covers the conservative movement and Republican coalition… and where the majority of the guests (but not all) are right leaning. The television equivalent of the reporting Dave Wiegel does. 9 pm: Left Brained. Flip it. A news show hosted by an extremely well informed, free-thinking and rational conservative that mostly covers liberal thought and the tensions in the Democratic party…. and where the majority of the guests (but not all) are left leaning. Get a figure representing one tribe to cover the other.

Okay, then let me be clearer, since I obviously did not communicate well. This sentence... "The conference features several online folks (TechCrunch’s Michael Arrington, Mahalo’s Jason Calacanis and CNET editor Dan Farber) who clearly ruffled the feathers of Journalism professors and frequent Twitterers, Jay Rosen and Jeff Jarvis, who basically said the term "audience" is just So Yesterday..." is bullshit, as a summary of what I said in my post and my reaction to the Audience Conference. Are we clear?

My 2006 post, The People Formerly Known as the Audience, doesn't say there's no more audience, or the people will not arrange themselves in that form any longer. You should have read it first. Here is what it does say: "Look, media people. We are still perfectly content to listen to our radios while driving, sit passively in the darkness of the local multiplex, watch TV while motionless and glassy-eyed in bed, and read silently to ourselves as we always have. "Should we attend the theatre, we are unlikely to storm the stage for purposes of putting on our own production. We feel there is nothing wrong with old style, one-way, top-down media consumption. Big Media pleasures will not be denied us. You provide them, we’ll consume them and you can have yourselves a nice little business. "But we’re not on your clock any more." http://journalism.nyu.edu/pubzone/weblogs/pressthink/2006/06/27/ppl_frmr.html About the Audience Conference, I didn't bitch about it. You should have checked. All I said is, "Oh man, the people formerly known as the audience are sooo wondering where their invitation is." (On Twitter) That's it.

This is a very intelligent paragraph... "The very edge of thinking on new online organizing is exactly focused on this issue. Change is hard. Change takes time, energy and intelligence. Build the next generation of organizing tools to aggregate time, energy and intelligence to solve very big problems by compiling more realistic contributions by people into something in aggregate that can significantly transform real-world activism." ... BUT: We have to be careful to underline that the tools themselves will not get it done, and the best tools are built in response to the very concrete problems that arise when we try to change the world. Thanks for your post.