Media Day - innnnnteresting...

It definately pays off to keep an eye on the Stripliefhebbers forum, I just discovered once again. Jeroen Mirck pointed out that there will be a national Media Day organised on the 18th of May (location as yet unknown) which is intended to sort of 'bridge the gap' between editors, journalists, columnists on one side, and the audience on the other, through open debates, discussions, introductions, etc.
So why does that interest a bunch of web comic artists ? Because Jeroen sent them a suggestion that news paper comic artists should also form a panel that day - which I agree with, as anyone who knows me well enough would expect I should, since I know how important a role in aiding communication comics can play.. and so do most papers and magazines who have known this for over a century now - for additional discussions. He then proceeded to ask, on the beforementioned forum, if any of the artists posting there were interested, including the online initiatives.
A cynical person might ask now, what on earth would an online initiative like Probeersel.com have to add to a national Media Day ? Well um - first of all, isn't the Internet a medium ? Most people pay a lot more attention to the web these days to get their information and news than to magazines and newspapers, since it delivers news faster (more directly I should say), you get various sources which most of the times are free, on your screen with just a few clicks of your mouse or a simple search query, and in fact recent looks into the way news travels shows that blogs and the likes are usually way ahead of 'traditional' news sources when it komes to news. And yes, I think that, as far-fetched as it may look at first glance, web comics are therefore also interesting to throw into this mix. Judging just from the visitor numbers a few comics sites I know (including ours) are getting, many people are getting their comics 'fix' through the web - and a lot of news sites are, just like in their paper variants, using comics to draw back audience who'll then also pay attention to their news (and, of course, their ad banners..)
So what do I think should be discussed if we ARE gonna go ? Well, I'd imagine that's more up to the audience, but I would expect such matters as how web comic artists deal with deadlines (where applicable, censorship (if any), connection to their audience, interactivity with the audience, which medium they personally prefer, etc. in a nice contrast to the newspaper comic artists, could be interesting to discuss. In any case, even if our partaking in all this isn't appreciated, I still think I might go. It will likely be a pretty interesting day to see how it all turns out regardless of wether comics and webcomics are welcome in the mix.
I've already discussed it with Greg and he's interested it seems - I think Joep and Troy should make a good addition to our presence because of their completely different interests and professional backgrounds, and besides, all four of us are involved in media quite heavily besides our Probeersel work. And I can think of a few other web comic artists in our fair Netherlands who might have an interesting thing or two to add. Time to dust off the old address book.