A couple of snippets worth sharing from this morning's BlogHer '08 keynote panel....paraphrased, of course:
Essence Communications Director of Digital Development, Lesley Pinckney, in response to a question on if Time Warner supports use of social media tools: Time Warner doesn't support use of twitter because it wants to own twitter - when we make a service big, we like to either own it, incubate it, or have an equity stake. Moving into a large media company does change something about your passion and energy, and that's why it's important to bring in new initiatives from outside.
Redbook editor-in-chief Stacy Morrison: Big media companies want to find the answer and keep it, but the best answers come with working openly. Hearst has been trying to be more open, partnering with and acquiring companies such as Kaboodle in the new media space...Internally, I always want to make the best mistakes, and I feels lucky that I work
somewhere that encourages making mistakes that we can learn from.
Redbook editor-in-chief Stacy Morrison: It's important to be genuine in your blogging, but personally I've found that I only share 75% of who I am in order to preserve the relationship with our audience - if I didn't take the time to be respectful and 'curate' what parts of myself are shared, it would break something that's very important.
Audience member: "Even though it doesn't bother me that the newspapers are dying, it pisses me off when they try to commit suicide."