• Can the techies save the news? – If  the scene at the recent BarCampPortland III meet up was any indication, that could very well be the case.
• The Smalltown News – Small newspapers are in a better shape than big ones to survive the recession and changing news business, according to this story I did for Oregon Business magazine.
• Room to write – No office space at home but hate working in coffee shops? Portland’s got plenty of communal workspaces for writers, part of a nationwide trend of shared workplaces.
• WordPress user group forms - The more writers take to blogging, the more call there is for places they can go for training, and this group is one of them.
• Portland is for word lovers – It only follows that the city with the country’s best independent book store and most active public library system would host a rockin’ annual book festival. Wordstock is it.
• City debates whether bloggers are reporters – In a scene that’s starting to repeat itself across the country, the Portland suburb of Lake Oswego debates whether to allow a local blogger into city meetings.
• While other papers sink, the Oregonian swims – I wrote this before the paper’s latest rounds of job cuts and salary reductions. But Portland’s daily is still publishing seven days a week, isn’t in bankruptcy and has managed to keep some of the country’s top feature writers and sports columnists – these days, that’s saying a lot.

That’s the question of the day as the newspaper industry transforms itself, and the subject of a panel discussion this Friday, April 17, at the Portland City Club, a non-profit public affairs and research organization.

Panelists taking part in the debate include Peter Bhatia, executive editor of the Oregonian; Alan Stavitksy, associate dean at the University of Oregon’s School of Journalism; and Charity Fain, the City Club’s executive director.

The lunch program started at 11:30 a.m. at the Governor Hotel, 611 SW 11th in downtown Portland. Cost is $16 for members and $20 for nonmembers. More information or online registration is available here.