The only real disappointment of Wordstock so far, Plazm Magazine's panel on print and digital publishing suffered from too many panelists, a too-broad focus, moderation that didn't sufficiently steer the conversation, and too much of Jon Raymond rambling crankily about Twitter. I was looking forward to this panel: Given that Plazm straddles the print and digital worlds, I expected an informed discussion about the challenges and advantages of publishing in different mediums. That discussion didn't happen. As much as I love Jon Raymond's work (I think he's fantastic, no joke), I don't think he belonged on this panel: He doesn't seem particularly tech savvy and he kept steering the conversation in the exact "the internet is ruining everything" direction I'd hoped the panel wouldn't go in.

Some of the high/lowlights:

Jon Raymond, Oregon Book Award winner/screenwriter: "Writing has become degraded in the twitter age, but that still hasn’t changed the core of what writing is. Or maybe it has..." and then he railed at some length against this op-ed, which he described as a poorly structured "cry for help" reflective of the millennial generation's inability to carry an argument for 600 words.

Anmarie Trimble,
publisher of pioneering web magazine Born, which just announced it'll cease publishing after 15 years: “We’re retiring because we’re exhausted. No one is willing to do this stuff for free anymore.”

Joshua Berger, Plazm's art director: "As print becomes more of a boutique phenomenon, we’re finding that people still want to work for free.”

[This bothered me: I understand that publications of this sort rely heavily, often exclusively, on volunteers and unpaid content—but it's important our current "blog for exposure" marketplace to insist that writers and designers deserve to be paid for their work. (Unless they're Mercury interns.) I would've liked to see some discussion of or justifications for basing an entire model on free contributions.]

Mike Merrill, founder of the Urban Honking blog network: "There’s a lot more crap [on the internet], but it’s a pyramid that supports a lot more good stuff at the top. Even stuff like twitter, there’s an art to it, an art to doing it correctly. It’s the first time a lot of us who aren’t professional writes have had to think about word count."

[I'm really glad Merrill was on this panel; he balanced out the doom 'n' gloom somewhat.]

Joshua Berger, Plazm's art director: "it’s important to carefully consider putting ink on paper, what it actually means. There's something interesting about doing something in a finite medium in an era where access to information is infinite."

[This quote gets at what I wanted out of the panel: a more direct comparison of working in these different mediums.]

And then everyone started talking about Kindles and ebooks and the importance of keeping physical books around the house so you can remember you've read them. And I wrote "I want to kill myself" in my notes and stopped paying attention.

~fin~