One of my favorite media critics, Eric Deggans of the St. Petersburg Times, has a post on his blog The Feed about Bill O'Reilly's coverage of the National Conference for Media Reform.

Deggans was at the conference and on a panel about media criticism. It was nice to hear him talk about his job. The Feed is regular reading for me and should be for anybody looking for insightful media criticism from a major metro newspaper.

MINNEAPOLIS - That is title of a panel I am speaking on today at the National Conference for Media Reform. Any casual reader of this blog or my column can guess as to how I would answer that question. I addressed it in my last column.

MINNEAPOLIS - In this age of rapidly advancing technology it is easy to forget the history of media and comparable eras of consolidation in other industries. Some historical perspective was brought to the media reform debate by Tim Wu at a panel this morning.

MINNEAPOLIS - Bill Moyers is giving the keynote speech at the National Conference for Media Reform. His speech can be seen live at the Free Press Web site.

MINNEAPOLIS - Can a media critic be useful if he approaches his job with a stated political bias? When I say a stated bias I do not mean whether journalists have biases. Everybody has biases, even journalists. Most journalists do not let political persuasions taint news coverage.

MINNEAPOLIS - A question was asked about how cell phones fit in to the battle over and open Internet during the Q&A period of the Future of the Internet panel. Tim Wu said that because cell phones have grown differently than the Internet the battle will be uphill.

"The culture of the cell phones is different than the culture of the Internet."

MINNEAPOLIS - That is the beginning of the title of the panel I am now sitting in. The full name is, "Future of the Internet: Open, Neutral, Mobile and Ubiquitous." The panel opened with some words by moderator Timothy Karr of Free Press. The first panelist was Tim Wu, who is not chairman the Free Press board and a law professor at Columbia University.

MINNEAPOLIS - Josh Silver, executive director of Free Press, got the National Conference for Media Reform off to a fiery start. You can take my word for it or watch him and other speakers on the Free Press Web site where they are being streamed.