At the online journalism symposium

I finally got a chance last night and over lunch today to have a lengthy chat with Len Apcar, editor of The New York Times on the Web, whose panel followed mine this morning at the International Symposium on Online Journalism in Austin.

Can’t reveal too much other than in broad strokes. Some interesting takeaways:

– The Times is well aware of the grassroots media phenomenon, and is looking at sensible ways of incorporating grassroots media into the website. It’ll happen gradually.

– Len is particularly interested in social networking and has even visited Tribe.net in San Francisco with Martin Nisenholz to get a first-hand glimpse of a market leader. Sounded like the Times is still early in the process of determining how they might want to incorporate social networking into the Times network.

– During his panel today, Len said that he and the Times don’t want to be seen as one-way, take-it-or-leave-it big media, and they’re constantly looking at ways to bring readers into a burgeoning converation. He said, “I look at OhmyNews as a form of social networking. We’re looking very closely at our audience. We have user content in the paper now in terms of movie reviews, hotels I stayed at, … and we want to do more.”

I got a chance to reconnect with Nora Paul, Steve Yelvington and Jane Ellen Stevens, and met “Blogumentary” filmmaker Chuck Olsen, Jon Dube of MSNBC.com, University of Texas’s Rosental Calmon Alves and washingtonpost.com editor Jim Brady in person for the first time. Also met Alberto Cairo, infographics director of Spain’s elmundo.es,

Once Ourmedia.org matures, perhaps we can start sharing grassroots media with the Post, New York Times and other media organizations.

JD Lasica, founder of Inside Social Media, is also a fiction author and the co-founder of the cruise discovery engine Cruiseable. See his About page, contact JD or follow him on Twitter.