As suspected, there was nothing particularly earth-shattering presented by last night’s panel on new media and ethics in journalism and business. What highlights there were — mostly coming from the Georgia State University professor of journalism (with a special focus on law and communications), Greg Lisby — seemed to be two steps forward only to take one step back a paragraph or two later when yet another unbelievably clueless assertion about the web was made by someone who’s had enough time to get to know better. Lisby came prepared with facts and figures and historical insight, and he had lots of us at the kids’ table looking at each other with raised eyebrows, nodding, and Twittering in unison that we liked what he just said.

No, there was no knife fight between a blogger and a PBA radio newser or anything remotely as exciting. I think the highlight of tension for the evening, in my mind, was around the 2:30 mark of the video below. A fellow asked a question that left the AJC Interactivity Manager nearly apoplectic, along the lines of, “Okay, so maybe most blogs are crap, but at least I know they’re crap, and as your content, which is supposed to be so refined and exclusive, starts sliding toward the crap end of the spectrum, why shouldn’t I just go read the people who specialize in crap from the get-go?” It obviously wasn’t that blunt, but it might as well have been for its effect, because as far as I could tell the AJC rep’s answer was, “But — b’gack — you — hey — we have blogs! And it’s not — we — that’s like, your opinion, man. And uh — I — somebody help me out here.”

As mentioned elsewhere, tonight a bunch of us blogger-terrorists are going to descend upon the Atlanta Press Club again to hear about “Ethics and New Media: How the Blogosphere is Affecting Journalism and Business.”

Please join Georgia State University’s Center for Ethics and Corporate Responsibility and the Atlanta Press Club as we discuss how bloggers are redefining journalism and presenting new challenges for businesses and other institutions. The discussion will be led by representatives of business, journalism and the electronic media. Assurant is the sponsor of this program.