Dave - Thanks for taking the time and trouble to blog the conferernce. As a fomer Kirk hire myself, it's good to see the old guru is still firing on all cylinders, still hammering home his core message: take control of the news, give it context, chase meaning and wisdom. But he is (in this talk anyway) neglecting another core mission of newspapers, one I've been thinking about a lot lately: creating community. That, more than chasing truth or adding context, is the real reason most newspapers are still alive and profitable in this crowded media market. That's always been a key job for the news, letting a community see itself, and thus direct or control itself. But I'd argue as our society's old bonds (of work, school and church) become weaker, as we becoming increasingly isolated and urban, newspapers (or any mass media) need to find new ways to meet that old need of creating communities. Kirk's vision is an admirable recipe for creating an intellectual community, the kind of trans-border or pan-geographical readership the NY Times aspires to. But it's only one piece of what most of us who work a lot closer to the ground must do.