G’day BlogFest-ers

Updated

A quick hello to those of you who went to the HotHouse Interactive BlogFest 05 brekky event this morning.

Yours truly was joined by The Fourth Estate’s Mike Walsh, journalist and new blogger Brad Howarth (thanks for the kudos re my big Telstra scoop Brad), and Deacon’s lawyer Andrew Sorensen to take turns in presenting our take on all things blog at Sydney’s very stylish Westin Hotel.

If you went, what did you think? I’ve had a few positive emails and comments already, so it’s good to see the level of interest in blogs is rising in Australia. Today was my second blog-related speech this year, and for a guy who’s currently living in print journalism land I must say that I enjoyed revelling in the subject again.

Now a quick media scoop: Mike Walsh revealed in his presentation that he is working on what is touted as News Limited’s first blog. News is about to launch a sports magazine called Alpha (SMH story here) with a reported circ around 600,000, and he’s building a supporting website and blog in stealth mode – i.e. didn’t ask for exec permission (Now there’s a great way to get around the blog sign-off problem in traditional media organisations.)

It will be interesting to hear about News Ltd executives’ reactions to the site. Although, given Rupert Murdoch’s on record call to action re blogs it just might get traction.

Update: Mike tells me New Ltd mgmt do actually know about the blog, but the site is in stealth mode – as all yet-to-be published sites are, I guess.