This article was originally published March 27 on yourobserver.com and is shared here courtesy of Observer Staff. The Observer is made up of journalists who provide you with hyperlocal community coverage about you, your neighbors and your neighborhood. But The Observer realized the one thing it was lacking in the new digital world of media was a good community contributor network, which is another way of saying a good group of bloggers. One of the hot trends in the newspaper business is changing the culture in which the newsroom dictates what [...]

A packed crowd piled in to the Tiger Bay luncheon today at Michael’s on East in Sarasota to talk about media. Some of my favorite people ever led the discussion about the history, present and future of news media. Biz 941‘s Susan Burns was the moderator and asked some very relevant and timely questions of panelists Diane McFarlin, Publisher at the Sarasota Herald-Tribune Media Group; Matt Walsh, Editor and CEO of the Observer Group; and This Week In Sarasota’s own Matt Orr (hence the R’orr, if you didn’t get it [...]