Goin' to Kansas City: Economics Blogger Forum

I'm blogging from the Minneapolis-St. Paul airport, which is getting hammered with a snowstorm that is supposed to be the biggest of the year. If the weather cooperates, I'll leave shortly for the Economics Blogger Forum in Kansas City, sponsored by the Kauffman Foundation.

According to the Kauffman Foundation:

Economic growth is a process of innovation and technological change. In the wake of the Internet revolution of the 1990s, blogging emerged as a booming phenomenon that is manifestly creative and destructive. Blogging is entrepreneurial, to be sure, driven by individuals with either expertise or strong opinions, sometimes both. Once castigated as people in pajamas, the broad wave of bloggers has disrupted print media and even—perhaps ironically—the art and science of economics itself.

In the span of a few years, a rich and incredibly timely discussion, debate, even tutorial about the economy has emerged through blogging techniques that were unknown a decade ago and probably unimaginable by almost everyone two decades ago. Opinions and advice are available from the brightest minds—available to schoolchildren of today in ways that would have been the envy of Presidents and Kings of generations past.

The Kauffman Foundation is dedicated to the idea that entrepreneurship and innovation drive economic growth. Naturally, this new technology is a fascinating one, both for its effect on the economic research frontier, but also as an innovation in its own right.

On February 27, 2009, the Kauffman Foundation is hosting the first ever physical conference for economics bloggers at the Foundation headquarters in Kansas City, Missouri. Participants include famous independent bloggers such as Matthew Yglesias, Tyler Cowen, Mike “Mish” Shedlock, Robert X. Cringely, and Mark Thoma as well as distinguished economics journalists such as Amity Shlaes, Steve Malanga, Michael Mandel, Brian Carney, and keynote speaker David Warsh.

Some of the topics to be discussed there include "Is Journalism Dead," "The 2009 Recession and Entrepreneurship," and "Internet Impact on Academic Scholarship: What is the Impact of a Wired World on Publishing and Research?"

In regard to the first topic, the WSJ reported today:

Denver's Rocky Mountain News will publish its final edition on Friday, E.W. Scripps said, illustrating the accelerating decline of the newspaper industry. Scripps said it was unable to find a buyer to preserve the 150-year-old daily.

Earlier this week, Hearst Corp. said it may close the San Francisco Chronicle unless it can quickly slash costs. Four newspaper owners have filed for bankruptcy protection since December: Tribune Co., owner of the Chicago Tribune and the Los Angeles Times; the closely held Star Tribune paper in Minneapolis; the parent company of the Philadelphia Inquirer and the Philadelphia Daily News; and New Haven Register owner Journal Register Co.

HT: Bob Wright for the WSJ story