April 28: Seattle, Wash.
The annual meeting of the American Society of Newspaper Editors is one of our industry's most interesting gatherings. It is most often held in Washington, DC, but every other year, it moves elsewhere around the nation. Many of journalism's brightest luminaries attend, and it is a privilege to represent SPJ here.

Among those I've noticed in the past two days are Seymour Topping, retired New York Times editor; Al Neuharth, former Gannett CEO; Arthur Sulzburger, Jr., publisher of the New York Times; John Temple, editor and publisher of the Rocky Mountain News; Jerry Ceppos, retired vice president of Knight Ridder; William Dean Singleton of Media News Corp.; Gary Pruitt, CEO of McClatchy; Ken Paulson, editor of USA Today; Charlotte Hall, editor of the Orlando Sentinel; Jennifer Sizemore, editor of MSNBC on the Web, and many more. One of my personal heroes, Adrian Holovaty, resident geek at the Washington Post Web site, also is here.

Tomorrow, the luncheon speaker is Bill Gates. Last year, it was George W. Bush.

Tonight, one of my predecessors as SPJ president, Reggie Stuart, was honored by the National Association of Minority Media Executives. He made a rousing speech suggesting that each of the editors in the audience had once gotten a job for which they were not qualified -- and each of them needs to pay that back by hiring someone just like they were, unqualified but ready for the challenge.

The photo is from Yasmin A. Aboytes, a student photographer for the ASNE Reporter.