At the Midwest Journalism Conference

I'm writing this from the annual Midwest Journalism Conference in Bloomington, Minnesota, in the shadow of the Mall of America.

Photojournalist Jim Gehrz of the Minneapolis Star-Tribune has just wrapped up a presentation. It started with a series of pictures from early in his career, much of it spent in Milwaukee. He has a real eye for the moment and capturing the emotion of an event.

But he is now doing much more multi-media work, going into the field with an audio recorder as well as his camera. In addition to creating still images for the paper, Gehrz produces many Web site features that incorporate multiple pictures, audio, and at times moving images.

It is a very interesting hybrid format and not what you expect a newspaper to be doing. But it is just another way the Internet is breaking down traditional media barriers.