Visiting the CNN Diner

This is a pic of me and Thom Patterson, one of the guys blogging the convention for CNN. Last night, Stephanie Vautravers from CNN invited me over to the CNN Diner for dinner and drinks, so I swung by.

I talked to Thom a bit about how CNN put together its blog for the convention. No Movable Type or Blogger - CNN just modified its web publishing software slightly to accommodate the blog - and I use the term "blog" loosely here. It's a blog in the sense that the convention news is fresh and is posted as it happens, but there are no comments, trackback links or anything else you might expect to see at a blog - just news in near real time.

Thom tells me that he and his partner Todd Leopold edit one another's stories just before they're posted. I didn't want to ask the question, but what makes CNN's blog a blog? To me, it's just quickie news stories of interest from a couple roving reporters. But it's cool anyway.

A couple minutes after this photo was taken, the Kobe Bryant news hit and bumped the convention news down on the CNN.com home page. It was kind of cool to see how CNN makes real-time decisions on what stories comprise its home page and how reporters adjust to that decision-making as they gather the news.

By the way, the milkshakes at the CNN Diner are to die for. ;-)