Editor’s note: Lee Oglesby interns with the Knight Communications department this summer. This post is from the day before the UNITY Conference, which goes all this week in Chicago. Knight is a sponsor of the conference, and convened all journalism grantees on Tuesday to discuss media innovation.

A few of the presentations at Knight’s Journalism Grantee Meeting here in Chicago Tuesday gave me some interesting ways to think about journalism in the digital era and the role I play as a reader.

Knight Chair Rosental Alves talked about the deconstruction of the print newspaper, and stressed that this was not synonymous with the decline of journalism. That theme presented itself throughout the room yesterday. I’m certain I’ll see it several times during the Unity Conference this week. I almost expect to see T-shirts that read ‘Journalism is Not Dead!’

Dianne Lynch, 2007 News Challenge winner, also used her presentation to stress the need to focus on the goal and not the medium, but she brought up some crucial points. One of these was that new media is not always journalism. Most times, it’s people using their Facebook to tell friends that The Dark Knight was awesome.

Dianne also mentioned that the audience of innovators and journalists present in the meeting Tuesday (and at Unity for the rest of the week) are the ‘early adopters’ of this new media. They’re ahead of the curve, but their readers are still behind and are likely to be a little more skeptical.

I’m not (yet) a digital innovator and I’m not a professional journalist. I’m a reader, and I have my doubts. For me, the most reliable news source is a print newspaper or an NPR station, This week, as I explore Unity, I’ll look for things that will encourage me to embrace the digital age and accept it as journalism.

If you can change my mind about digital journalism, I’d like to hear from you. Leave a comment.