Saturday, July 09, 2005

Heritage After-action, Part I

Friday I attended a panel discussion at the Heritage Foundation which featured Ed Morrisey of Captain's Quarters, Jim Hill of the Washington Post Writers Group and Dan Glover of National Journal and Beltway Blogroll.

As usual, the best part of these sessions was after the prepared remarks when the dialogue between the panelists and audience begins. Mark Tapscott of Heritage did a good job finding a quality panel with the kind of diversity that makes for good discussion. I would post more of a reaction but unfortunately, I left my laptop at a client's office so that will have to wait until next week.

In addition to the three gentlemen above, I met several other people some for the first time, Mike Marshall of Pajamahadin and Michael Calderon. Both were interesting and it was nice to put a face on the postings. Like me, Mike is a consultant while Michael is a high school teacher.

It was also nice to see E.J. Dionne of the Washington Post again. He's always got something interesting to say. Friday, he mentioned his latest theory on newspapers: that the blogging explosion has actually helped increase the online audience of newspaper columnists. I'd love to see some research on the topic because it sounds quite possible.

For a good summary of what went on, see this post from Mary Katherine Ham, a blogger at Heritage, whom I also had the pleasure of seeing again. Ed Morrisey also has an after-action post.