225pxdan_gillmor_2005Dan Gillmor, author of We The Media: Grassroots Journalism By the People, For the People, is coming to Vermont this Saturday. He’ll be at the 30th anniversary celebration for the Center for Rural Studies, on a panel about communicating with rural communities.

Dan spent 25 years as a journalist in the newspaper business(including several years here in Vermont) before leaving the biz tofocus on developing “citizen media.” He’s currently running the Knight Center for Digital Media Entrepreneurship, a new project of the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism & Mass Communication at Arizona State University.

I interviewed Dan back in 2006, prior to a talk he gave in Montpelier. Here’s an excerpt, describing his departure from the San Jose Mercury News:

Whenhe departed in 2004 to become a citizen media evangelist, news junkiestook note. In a letter to his editor, Vindu Goel, Gillmor said he wassorry togo. “Something powerful is happening,” he wrote. “It’s in the earlystages and I have a chance to help figure this out… I hate theidea of leaving. But I’d hate not trying this even more.”

Goel praised Gillmor in an announcement about his departure: “Danhas a rare gift among journalists: foresight,” he wrote. “He can seewhat’s going to be important long before other people, and he tellsreaders why they should pay attention.”

See Gillmor — with panelists Chris Braithwaite of the Barton Chronicle, Dick Drysdale of the Heraldof Randolph, Lauren-Glenn Davitian of Ch. 17, and Jim Leddy of VermontAgricultural College Board — on Saturday, October 4, from 5-6:30 p.m. at the Mount Mansfield Room in UVM’s Davis Center.

Thanks, Michael, for the tip!

Cross-posted at the Vermont 3.0 blog.

 

This article appears in Sep 24-30, 2008.

Seven Days’ deputy publisher and co-owner Cathy Resmer is a writer, editor and advocate for local journalism. She works in the paper’s Burlington office and lives vicariously through the reporters while raising money to pay them. Cathy started at Seven Days as a freelance writer in 2001 and still has the Rolodex to prove it. As the paper’s first online editor, she launched Seven Days email newsletters and started the paper’s first social media accounts. Cathy has overseen Kids VT, Vermont’s...