A few takeaways from last night's The Pitch event here in Seattle.

• A journalism powerhouse like Tracy Record still has the benefit of stealth on her side as her West Seattle Blog builds its business. There was a ridiculous assertion that what she does is 'gossip,' not journalism. I hear echoes of that all the time and I'm sure it won't go away -- a lot of local sites deserve it. But it provides fantastic cover to move forward and conquer.
• Most people agreed that 'newspapers' would and could someday compete with neighborhood blogs. But it all broke down in the hows and whys. Tracy, bless her, said, nope, they're too set in their ways (and I'm simplifying her position which, like the rest of the night's points, was more nuanced). Her position is also right, kind of. I think the answer we all arrived at during last night's talk is that yeah, big media entities can compete but not if they stay big and do things the way they do them now. So is that yes, big media can do it or no big media can't? I'll let you figure it out.
• I tried to make point that no matter what happens with big media, this is a good time to be a content entrepreneur and that, going forward, the creation and management of content by skilled practitioners will command a higher premium. I'm probably full of beans -- after all, look at what Hollywood has done to writers -- but it does seem like this is good time to be a content entrepreneur.
• It was really cool to meet somebody working on new media strategy for something old school like the Little Nickel classifieds papers. Of course this stuff translates to the future. Probably pretty fun to try to figure out how.

For more on The Pitch, check out eat sleep publish. Here's the Twitter hash #pitch1208 from last night's talk.