You're a Good Man, Charlie Robertson

EVENTS DEFINING GAY JOURNALISM FOCUS OF COMMONWEALTH CLUB FORUM
DATE: Monday, October 6, 2008 TIME:5:15 p.m. - Reception 6:00 p.m.

PROGRAM: “No Obits’ and Matthew Shepard, Ten years later: A Forum on Gay Journalism”
WHERE: Commonwealth Club of California 595 Market Street , 2nd Floor
SPONSORS: Commonwealth Club of California National Lesbian, Gay Journalism Association, Northern California Chapter

Took my reporting class to this tonight, paid for the tickets and the parking. They are doing speech stories this week, and I wanted them to cover an event that involved pain, loss and passion, not one of those deals involving a speaker who pretends to care talking to an audience that pretends to listen.

I will not venture to sum up the evening, which would be too much like work, particularly after a late night and a long day. Also, it would be *hard* to sum it up. Indeed, it was educational (I hope) for the kids to hear the moderator attempt more than once to wrest the nine count'em nine panelists back onto what he considered to be the agreed-upon topic and then to watch and listen as the panelists spread out a buffet, a cornucopia of tart criticisms of the MSM (expected), Bill Clinton and the Defence of Marriage Act (reasonable), drug use in the gay community (okay; I see your point) and big San Francisco gay organizations that love the real estate moguls who fund them more than the homeless gays living in wretchedness (well, there you go).

Plus a dozen, two dozen, three dozen more asides, interjections and mots provocateur.

A little more than a little is by much too much? Nah. We're talking journalism here. A good day for the young journalists.