A couple of weeks ago I had the pleasure of participating in the Brave News World Summit hosted and organized by The Centre for Creative Communications at Centennial College in Toronto's east end.

It was a great day spent with interesting people who work in the local and regional media industry. The keynote was Jeff Jarvis, who was unable to attend, so he presented his "What Would Google Do" rap via skype.

I participated in an afternoon workshop around the concept of a journalist toolbox, or what any aspiring hack needs to know to make it in this cut throat business. The picture above is from that session, which was organized by Ellin Bessner who wrote her own blog post about the event.

There was also a blog compiled by Centennial students during the day, as well as a blog post from Melissa Feeney.

One of the arguments I made in the journalist toolbox session was how important it is to also focus on distribution and audience relations. The days of just filing a story and forgetting about it are over, and the onus is now on the individual to cultivate a direct relationship with their audience.

The example I gave to demonstrate why this was important is Jesse Brown, who produces the show Search Engine. This show began at CBC, however when it was cut, Jesse was able to bring the show over to TVO in large part cause the relationship he has with his audience allows him to bring them over as well. This shows a type of labour empowerment that is possible when a journalist not only produces solid content but also takes the time to build audience loyalty.

Another element of the journalist's toolbox that I emphasized was the need to focus on skill sharing. The landscape is always changing, and the journalist needs to always be learning. This can be a lot easier when co-operative and collaborative, and the various skills in the newsroom are often underutilized because they are rarely shared.

Two examples I offered to illustrate how this could be effective were Nora Young and Mathew Ingram. At the CBC, Nora and her colleagues at Spark have been holding free sessions for staff to learn and discuss how Twitter can be used responsibly and effectively. Mathew has similarly done this and more at the Globe and Mail. The results of this kind of sharing are already visible as both of these organizations start to use Twitter and the web in general in increasingly innovative ways.

The discussion on skill sharing also got me thinking about inter-generational dialogue, and the fact that journalists, much like writers or wine, improve with age. So as the media industry enters a period of volatility and change, a lot of senior journalists are retiring or leaving senior positions. It strikes me that there is considerable potential in organizing this constituency, who are still in their prime, to continue doing their great work on the web.

This got me thinking about one of my journalistic heroes, the great I.F. Stone, who embodied the proscriptive advice I gave at the summit. If you want to survive in the media game, you need to be small, agile, and lethal.