I've been fascinated by the reactions of twittering colleagues at the College Media Advisers conference, my non-twittering Washburn colleagues, and the college media blogosphere to the general mood at the Kansas City conference this past week. The  consensus seems to be that many of the new media sessions simply didn't contain enough instruction.

However, I think the general theme between the sessions is right on the money-- student journalists must be entrepreneurial to succeed. In order to stand out from the crowd, successful journalists must find new ways to promote their content and themselves to succeed.

Session after session repeated the mantra of "audio, video, Facebook, Twitter." There are some complaints that these sessions didn't include enough practical information... I agree. However, an hour-long session is really just suited to describing ideas--the implementation is left up to the listener--we must be entreprenuerial, and figure these things out on our own.

I'll admit, I was pretty disappointed with several sessions. My take away message is that development of new media practices in college newspapers isn't driven by ACP/CMA-- it's driven by innovative students who care deeply about the impact of their media. As Rich Beckman said, it's important to follow individuals, not organizations. Look for innovation in the field, not in the conference center.