By ADELL CROWE
Standards and development editor
USA Today

The 2007 APME conference in October delivered the expected favorites – informative speakers, top-notch networking and entertaining evening events – but also broke much new ground.

"A lot of editors told me they were inspired by the innovative spirit," said Karen Magnuson, APME president during the conference.

"They left feeling jazzed about the future and what they can accomplish with fresh ideas and a re-energized sense of journalistic purpose. I have no doubt that we'll see a lot more innovation from members during the next year."

Here are a few of the innovations and "firsts" for APME:

■ This was the first time the organization met in Washington, D.C., which made it possible for the U.S. House speaker to address the group for the first time. (During the address, Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced that he Senate Judiciary Committee had approved a federal shield law, setting it up for passage by the Senate.)

■ APME was the first group to check out a still unfinished Newseum. Conference attendees previewed several new Newseum videos and were the first to try out the interactive newsroom where they taped news broadcasts, made news decisions and wrangled over some tough ethical decisions.

■ To select the first winner of APME's Innovator of the Year Award, the group used handheld voting devices to vote in real time. The Fort Myers (Fla.) News-Press was selected for its trend-setting initiatives that include mobile journalists, crowd-sourcing and a team of watchdog citizens. More than 40 newspapers entered the contest, and their ideas and others collected from newspapers across the country were captured in "2007 Great Ideas," a compendium of journalism innovation, which is downloadable on www.apme.com.

■ Other great ideas were shared during the APME/UNITY "Improving Diversity Through Better Retention" session. In a first-time collaboration, the two organizations shared the findings of interviews with more than 50 journalists of color and a review of newsroom staffing levels. The upshot: More minorities are leaving journalism than are entering it. "We're at a crisis point," said Jeanne Mariani-Belding, national president of the Asian American Journalists Association.

■ During lunch Oct. 4, the AP gave attendees a first-ever live question-and-answer session with Baghad Bureau Chief Steven Hurst and a glimpse at the bureau during a video tour. "We've got some things we can't show you," Hurst said, explaining why there were no outside views of the compound. "So those who shouldn't see it, don't see it."

■ The APME Foundation Auction, an annual highlight of the conference, broke the record for the amount of money raised for foundation programs. More than $18,000 was spent on bourbon, bracelets and other donated treasures. The event's other first: An all-journalists band got the National Press Club rocking.

And for Cindy Allen, editor of the Enid (Okla.) News & Eagle, attending APME for the first time, it was all new. "The sessions were all valuable, but probably the most valuable part were the one-on-one conversations I had with other editors I met. I'm always interested to find out how other paper are doing things, and every editor I visited with gave me valuable information."

Here's a recap of some sessions:

Where the journalism of the future is being done now: Only Web sites that provide ways for readers to build communities can sustain the Web traffic, said panelist Jim Brady of washingtonpost.com. Among the ways to do that: Build social networking as part of the news site, create games and post databases.

Innovations unveiled: A report from The Associated Press: In AP's annual report to the organization, executives said member papers will see more investigative journalism, a greater number of multimedia elements and more content during peak Internet hours.

Making the case for quality multimedia: Newspapers that have not yet embraced multimedia need to wade in now, panelists said. Nancy Andrews, deputy managing editor for online at the Detroit Free Press, said reporters at her paper started by creating "some the worst video known to man." The next step, she said, was working on the quality.

From Superman to subpoena: Defending a free press: In this session, attendees heard sobering statistics on the public's view of the press. Only 37 percent of respondents think the media try to report the news truthfully, and 36 percent of them think newspapers should operate without any government influence, according to a survey by Freedom Forum's First Amendment Center. Most troubling: Only 11 percent of those polled believe the media are unbiased.

Lessons learned from the Virginia Tech tragedy: Editors at newspapers near the university whose reporters were the first on the scene said the most important lesson they learned was the need for speed. "Make it good enough and get back in the field," Peggy Bellows, managing editor at the Richmond (Va.) Times-Dispatch, said she told her reporters. Bellows said her paper initially covered the event in blog format, making more than 30 entries before noon on the morning of the shooting. At the end of the day, the more than 50 entries became a story for a print extra.

Election 2008: Get ready; it's sooner than you think: Washington bureau chiefs on this panel said voters will be looking for innovative coverage of one of the most unusual campaigns in modern history. "The signature of this campaign will be the YouTube campaign, the 24/7 campaign and the most blogging you've ever seen. Voters are hungry to know the candidates," said David Westphal of McClatchy Newspapers.

Protecting the right to now in the 21st century:  This panel urged more coverage of Freedom of Information issues by the media. The battle to preserve government transparency shouldn't just be fought in the courtroom using lawsuits to argue for withheld records, said Lucy Dalglish, executive director of The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press. "You should be out there editorializing every week."