I'm attending Media Giraffe's Journalism That Matters conference in Memphis, which is only loosely connected to the National Conference for Media Reform.  So far, it's a very out-of-the-box-thinking oriented session, with lawyers, bloggers, "media reformers" journalism professors and independent journalists talking about the future of journalism (not just newspapers, but all forms).

To prepare for the meetings, we were all asked to read a few things that are geared at helping us think about the bigger journalism and digital media pictures. (Sometimes in my day-to-day work, I forget to see the forest for all the trees. I suspect I'm not alone in that.) Here they are:

Geneva Overholser's "On Behalf of Journalism: A Manifesto for Change" (pdf): Overholser is a professor at Mizzou's School of Journalism Washington bureau. She writes, "This document seeks to bring attention to the bright spots and open prospects on a troubling landscape, to recognize promise where peril is more apparent."

Leonard Witt's "Constructing a Framework to Enable an Open-Source Reinvention of Journalism": Witt is a professor at Kennesaw State University. From the article's abstract: "This article builds upon open source/open content literature and applications to develop a framework from which academics, citizens, critics, journalists and the media industry can collectively develop a sustainable model or models to save quality journalism — possibly by reinventing journalism as it has traditionally been defined. This article provides that framework, not so much as a theoretical construct, but rather as an annotated checklist to guide those interested in reinventing journalism."