It's not politics as usual for many journalists covering the race for the White House. Political websites are changing how political news is covered and how it is received. Like TV but without the cumbersome equipment, Web coverage is as close to real time as it gets. It's a multimedia world and stories are now told with video, stills, audio, text streams, blogs, and interactive enhancers, often all at the same time.

Robust political coverage has been available on the Internet for more than 20 years but mass adoption of the World Wide Web didn't catch fire until the mid-2000's. It was only four years ago that Politico.com emerged as a destination site for political news. ABC and NBC News have recently launched purpose-built political websites and we have assembled a panel of notables from each of those organizations to disccuss the present state of their art.

The New York Press Club Foundation's Holiday Party is a favorite holiday "season opener" and an annual contender for most convivial. Always a memorable evening, the New York Press Club Foundation's Holiday Party also brightens the holidays for disadvantaged New York City youngsters through toys donated by party guests.

You are cordially invited to join the festive gathering of friends and colleagues for an evening of good cheer in the Delta SKY360° Suite at Yankee Stadium, high above home plate.

And speaking of plates, guests will want to fill theirs with delicious items from the non-stop Holiday Party buffet:

Salads Yankees Caesar Salad, Romaine Hearts, Classic Dressing, Shaved Parma Cheese, and Roasted Garlic Brioche Croutons Mini Iceberg Wedge, Crumbled Blue Cheese, Tomato, Red Onion Citrus Splashed Orzo and Asparagus Salad, with Fresh Crab Pasta Lobster Ravioli tossed in a Mixed Seafood Cream Sauce Entrées Sliced New York Steak with Beer Battered Onion Rings Grilled Chicken Breast with Roasted Garlic and Rosemary Au Jus Sides Garlic Whipped and Crispy Shoestring Potato Duet Pan Flashed Baby Vegetables Freshly Baked Rolls with Butter Dessert Freshly Sliced Fruit Assorted Mini Cheesecakes An array of Stadium made Specialty Cupcakes Beverages Wine, beer, soda, bottled waters, coffee & tea

News outlets in New York have have been criticized for ignoring the Manhattan "Occupy Wall Street" movement in its early days and for failing to "get" the significance of the burgeoning protests, now widespread in this country and abroad.

Is local media clueless about how to cover an event that lacks the usual mechanisms for expedient processing such as a PR apparatus, a central authority, and "sound bite" messaging? Are critics of the media correct when they claim that even now, local media remains more interested in reporting mundane events at Zuccotti Park than exploring the issues that have drawn protesters there to "occupy Wall Street?"

Join us for a panel discussion of those and other issues related to the OWS phenomenon including the response so far by City government and police, the monopolization of a privately owned public space, and the impact of the OWS siege on neighborhood businesses and residents.

Our list of panelists is growing and now includes:

• Bill Buster, OWS supporter and participant.
• Julie Menin, Chair of lower Manhattan's Community Board 1.
• Mike Amon, Wall Street Journal editor.
• Robert C. Hockett, of Cornell Law School, an expert on state, federal & Constitutional law (who lives near Zuccotti Park).

Mitch Lebe of Metro Networks will moderate the discussion.
A free event for Press Club members and CUNY J-School students.

A newspaper with global reach and the nation’s most listened to public radio station are collaborating on a new online forum for those with a stake or interest in education in New York City.

The New York Times and WNYC-FM have created SchoolBook a community-based "hyperlocal" Web site that connects the City's approximately 1,700 public and 800 private schools with anyone who'd like to find out more about them or who'd like to join the conversation about education in New York City.

Featuring a home page with fresh, daily content, SchoolBook offers coverage of education-related news by New York Times and WNYC reporters; user-friendly, interactive tools to help parents and others analyze schools and education issues; and platforms for community journalism and discussion.

Also on the site: user friendly databases containing information on school staffing, programs and facilities, including an expanded verison of the test-score database that currently resides on nytimes.com.

Join the creators of SchoolBook for a discussion of how they plan to develop their inovative, comprehensive resource and online forum for parents, teachers, administrators and education experts.

On the Panel:
Jim Schacter, Associate Managing Editor of the New York Times who is working to expand the newspaper's footprint online and in print. He is the leader of The Local, that develops hyperlocal Web sites that team professional journalists, leading journalism schools and local residents.

Jodi Rudoren is education editor of the New York Times who oversees a team of dozens of reporters covering schools and colleges in New York and across the country. Her other work at the Times has included creating the new Sunday Metropolitan section.

John Keefe is the Senior Executive Producer for News at WNYC-FM. He is leading the station’s efforts in interactive news applications.

Admission to this event is free of charge. RSVP required.

This year's theme: "Crisis and Change." In a year of numerous natural and man-made catastrophes, what lessons have been learned?

Press briefing on the progress of World Trade Center reconstruction by developer Larry Silverstein and an update on the National September 11 Memorial and Museum by its president and CEO, Joe Daniels.

The New York Press Club is hosting this event at 7 World Trade Center. Media-specific visits to the Memorial Plaza or panoramic views of the WTC reconstruction site and Memorial for credentialed, working press will follow the development briefings.

There has been heavy demand for this event. We are able to admit only those who have sent an RSVP.

Schedule:

• 10:30AM - arrive 7 WTC
• 11:00AM - news conference with Larry Silverstein and Joe Daniels
• 12:00PM - media-specific tours/photo ops begin
• 01:00PM - event ends

A safety dress code applies on-site:

• Work boots/sturdy shoes
• No skirts or dresses
• Hard hats will be provided

Contact the Press Club.
More about the World Trade Center.
More about the National September 11 Memorial & Museum.

We return to Manhattan's Water Club for this year's New York Press Club Journalism Awards and Installation of Officers dinner.

A reception (open bar) on the Water Club's upper deck is prelude to an evening that celebrates exceptional journalism.

Keeping with tradition, newly-elected Press Club officers will be installed in a (mercifully) brief ceremony immediately following cocktails. Then it's on to a multi-course banquet and the evening's raison d'être: presentation of the New York Press Club Awards for Journalism for 2011.

Always a memorable evening, the Awards Dinner fosters acknowledgement of notable achievement by peers. It is also a terrific opportunity in a delightful setting for socializing and for catching up with friends and colleagues.

DRESS: Business Casual.

Last year's dinner sold out. We recommend reserving early.

A TV Guide poll ranks him as the second most trusted news anchor in the land and the Washington Post compares his rapid-fire delivery to a news NASCAR driver, "racing through the news at breakneck speed."

Enter the "The FOX Report" and go "Around the World in 80 Seconds" with Shepard Smith, whose fast-paced style and jam-packed newscasts are unique in TV news.

Smith's reporting has been a fixture on FOX News Channel (FNC) since he joined the network at its inception in 1996. Currently anchor of FNC's signature evening newscast, "The Fox Report," which ranks in the top five programs in cable news and has been number one in the 7 PM timeslot for over 100 consecutive months, Smith also appears in the afternoon as anchor of "Studio B with Shepard Smith."

An intrepid reporter, Smith has covered virtually every major news story over the course of his career. He notably covered Hurricane Katrina from the French Quarter as an impending threat and its aftermath from Mississippi, including the recovery efforts. Additionally, he has provided extensive reporting on the Middle East conflict during the summer of 2006 from the Israel-Lebanon border; the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon and the subsequent war in Afghanistan; Operation Iraqi Freedom; the funeral of Pope John Paul II; the Columbia Shuttle disaster; the Columbine school massacre; and President Clinton's impeachment and trial. He was also one of only two television correspondents to witness the execution of Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh in June of 2001.

Spend an evening of Q&A with Shepard Smith and engage with the man whose distinctive style Fox News calls, "the future of television news."

Moderator: Rich Lamb WCBS Newsradio 880.

A storied chronicler of countless thousands of stories about New York City and its denizens, Jimmy Breslin's 40+ years as a reporter and columnist for a number of metro papers made him perhaps the best known journalist in a town where such fame is often fleeting.

The CUNY Graduate School of Journalism is hosting Jimmy Breslin for a talk about his reporting and column writing career and about the books he has written (20+), including one soon-to-be-released, a biography of Branch Rickey, the Brooklyn Dodgers executive who hired Jackie Robinson, breaking major league baseball's "color barrier."

This is a rare opportunity to meet and talk with the near-legendary muckraker and Pulitzer Prize winner who retired as a full-time columnist at Newsday in 2004.

Breslin's career began at the Long Island Press. He rose to fame in ensuing years at the New York Herald Tribune. the Daily News and Newsday as a champion of the "common man" and scourge of those whose machinations made life difficult for ordinary people. He is considered a pioneer of the "New Journalism" of the early 1960's when his Herald column was incorporated by Clay Felker into the fledgling New York Magazine.

Breslin's reporting on the Mob and on individual mobsters (who much preferred anonymity) further elevated his profile and in at least one incident, led to a severe beating at the hands of a mafioso who was unhappy about Breslin's exposés. Breslin's 1969 novel about Brooklyn gangsters, The Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight, was made into a movie starring Robert DeNiro and Jerry Orbach.

The CUNY appearance will be a homecoming of sorts for Breslin. The Graduate J-School is housed in the same building on West 40th Street that at one time housed his first employer, the New York Herald Tribune.

Moderator: Tom Robbins
A formidable force in investigative journalism, late of the Village Voice, now investigative reporter-in-residence at CUNY's J-School and a member of the New York Press Club.

This event is free for Press Club members. Please RSVP to Amy Dunkin at CUNY.

Spring will be in the air and attentions turned from slush aplenty to...plenty of slushies! The ideal moment for our first mixer of the new year. You may have seen the TV "live shots" from Blondies Bar on that fateful night not so long ago when the Jets couldn't quite overcome that other team and were again denied a Super Bowl.

Drowned sorrows notwithstanding, the TV coverage spoke volumes about the popularity of Blondies as a great place to meet and greet. Which is exactly the point of Press Club mixers.

Join colleagues and friends for socializing and elbow-bending (no cover, no minimum, no RSVP, sports-talk optional, non-members welcome). Hope to see you there!

An Arab American journalist who lately has been reporting extensively on the Egyptian revolution, Ayman was previously based in Gaza, and he was one of the only international journalists to report from inside Gaza during Israel's Gaza war in 2008-2009, for which his reporting was nominated for an International Emmy Award. He has also reported on sectarian violence in Lebanon, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, human rights abuses in the Gulf and on political and social issues from across the United States.

Before joining Al-Jazeera English, Ayman was a producer with CNN, based for two years in Baghdad, where he covered the immediate aftermath of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. He was the only news producer allowed to observe and report on the U.S. handover of Saddam Hussein to an Iraqi judge, and has also produced exclusive reports from Libya, where he was the first journalist to enter one of Libya's nuclear research facilities. Ayman began his journalism career working for NBC in Washington DC, where he covered the inauguration of president George Bush, the September 11 attacks and the war in Afghanistan. His work on a CNN documentary about daily life in Iraq and various documentaries he has worked on for NBC News have been nominated for the American Emmy awards.

Join us for an evening of Q&A with Ayman Mohyeldin and hear at first hand his experiences watching and reporting as millions in the Middle East rage against oppression.

Moderator:
Stephanie Gaskell, editor/founder The War Report.

Bill Keller's career at the New York Times has covered nearly every editorial base. Bureau chief in Johannesburg and Moscow - his reporting from the Soviet capitol earned him print journalism's highest accolade in 1989, a Pultizer Prize - he has also served the paper as foreign editor and managing editor, Op-Ed columnist, senior writer and columnist for the New York Times Magazine.

It's not known if before taking the executive editor job Keller sensed the impending, profound changes that are now roiling the newspaper business. Prescient or not, Bill Keller finds himself today at the editorial helm of what's considered the national "newspaper of record," in alarmingly treacherous waters, whose rogue waves have mercilessly swamped numerous other publications.

In response, the Times has aggressively engaged the many challenges posed by transformative technologies - either adopting them or when practical, creating them. An "early adopter" of Internet delivery, the Web site of the New York Times is consistently ahead of the curve in nearly all respects when compared with the sites of other conventional media companies. The Times recently announced a foray into E-books which will be available only in digital editions, not in print. (The first Times E-book, Open Secrets: WikiLeaks, War and American Diplomacy has an introductory essay written by Keller whose recent cover story for the New York Times Magazine detailed the paper's handling of the mountains of secret government communiques it received from the Wikileaks organization.)

Don't miss this opportunity for a face-to-face dialogue with Bill Keller on topics of vital interest to journalists and journalism.

Moderator:
Brooke Gladstone, host/managing editor, "On the Media."

Spend an evening of conversation and Q&A with two of New York's premier investigative journalists, both of whom recently decamped the Village Voice.

The poor advertising market and the many watershed changes in how and where people find and consume news has devastated the bottom lines at many news organizations - print publications in particular.

The Village Voice has not been spared the indignities of diminishing revenue and tight-budgets. Consequently, or, as the Voice might once have conspiratorily phrased it, perhaps 'conveniently,' many of the paper's most accomplished contributors have been "lost" in a succession of staff and management shake-ups that include its 2005 sale to the Arizona-based publisher, New Times Media.

Wayne Barrett and Tom Robbins are the latest marquee talents to depart the Voice. Barret, a prolific and tenacious political reporter with almost 40 years at the Voice, was reportedly let go because he was too costly. Robbins, another highly regarded investigative reporter (and winner of several New York Press Club and other awards for journalism) walked away, reportedly in solidarity.

Both men will visit the New York Press Club to talk about their recent experiences and to field questions about the many issues facing journalists, their craft, and their employers at a time when the game for each is fundamentally changing.

Moderator: Juliet Papa, 1010 WINS.

Can a reporter deduct personal cell phone expenses on their tax return? What about that new laptop? Your Press Club membership dues?

Before you file your 2010 return, learn from the experts what sorts of common and not-so-common expenses journalists may claim and other tips for preparing your taxes without raising red flags at the Internal Revenue Service.

Prominent CPAs Alan J. Straus and I. Jay Safier, members of the New York State Society of Certified Public Accountants, will offer guidance and answer questions from both news shop staff members and freelancers.

Moderator: John Lieberman CPA/PFS.

This event is free-of-charge.
Please RSVP to let us know you will attend.

"How'm I doin'?" is a question familiar to a generation of New Yorkers who remember the last financial crisis to nearly cripple the city. It was bellowed with some frequency by the man whose leadership brought New York back from the brink of fiscal calamity.

The New York Press Club welcomes former city councilman, congressman and mayor, Ed Koch, for an evening of Q&A about the current financial crisis, among many other topics.

A tireless champion and promoter of New York City with an impressive portfolio of political accomplishment locally, domestically and internationally, Koch is also an effusive lover of life.

As unpredictable in his personal pursuits as he is in politics, Koch is a best-selling author, actor, movie critic, political commentator, educator, and practicing attorney. Those with long memories will recall that the former mayor stepped into the breach to hold sway over the "People's Court" for two TV seasons when Judge Wapner retired.

Join us for what is sure to be a scintillating and memorable evening.

Moderator: Mitch Lebe, Metro Networks

Free-of-charge for New York Press Club members.
(Please RSVP to let us know you will attend).

Always a memorable evening, the New York Press Club Foundation's Holiday Party is a favorite holiday season opener and an annual contender for the season's most convivial.

Emphasizing camaraderie and good cheer, the event also brightens the holidays for disadvantaged youngsters in the New York area through toys contributed by party guests.

You are cordially invited to join the happy throng. A regional open bar and these delicacies from the exemplary Dos Caminos kitchen await:

David Paterson's political career took an unexpected turn in 2008 when, as Lieutenant Governor, he ascended to the governorship of New York State upon Eliot Spitzer's abrupt resignation in scandal.

It wasn't the first time serendipity played a role in Paterson's career. While working on the political staff of then city clerk David Dinkins, Paterson became a state senator in a special election called when senator Leon Bogues died. Coincidentally, it was the same seat representing parts of Harlem, Manhattan Valley and the Upper West Side previously held by Paterson's father, former New York state senator and Secretary of State, Basil Paterson. David became the youngest state senator in New York history and rose to become minority leader.

In a bittersweet twist, as governor, Paterson's administration is coinciding with the devastating international financial collapse whose toll is vividly felt by state and local governments as vanishing tax revenues. Despite early and frequent exhortations to contend with the mounting difficulties, the governor has had limited success in rousing New York's famously dysfunctional legislature into effectively mitigating the fallout.

Spend an evening with governor Paterson whose decision not to seek election to a full term may provide inspiration for unusual candor during his Press Club visit.

Moderator: Rich Lamb, WCBS Newsradio 880

Free admission for New York Press Club members (RSVP required).
Non-members: $15 | Students: $5

Spend a day on one of New Jersey's premiere golf courses, site of last year's New Jersey qualifying rounds for the U.S. Open. Pursue your passion for putting during what might be the peak of "leaf peeping" season.

Avid duffers will recognize this outing as a hole-in-one:

$175 buys 18-holes at Haworth with cart, locker room privileges, $15 pro shop credit, driving range time, on-course refreshments, buffet lunch, full dinner, and all gratuities included.

We'll also offer a related activity with spectacular prizes of special interest to avid golfers:

Lucky winners will receive golf packages to Pebble Beach in California and Tucker's Point in Bermuda. The Pebble Beach package includes three nights at the Lodge at Pebble Beach and two days of golf (for two). The Tucker's Point package provides three nights at the resort with unlimited golf (also for two).

Our outing is limited to just 75 golfers so please reserve early.

The Haworth Country Club is minutes from the GWB.

Via Tappan Zee Bridge:
New York State Thruway to Garden State Parkway exit 14A. Continue on Parkway to exit 165. Take Oradell Ave. to Grant Ave. Turn left at Grant Ave. and left at Sunset Ave. to Lake Shore Drive.

Via George Washington Bridge:
After crossing George Washington Bridge, take Route 4 (West). Exit at River Road. Make left on River Road, (before the second traffic light, bear to the right) and continue to New Bridge Road. At the first traffic light, turn left onto Boulevard and continue to Grant Ave. (Approx. 4 miles from River Road exit).

Now in its 18th year, the New York Press Club Foundation Journalism Conference is recognized as the premier ongoing event of its kind in metro New York. Featuring numerous tracks and sessions led by respected working journalists and academics, the half-day event is of useful interest to all journalism ranks, from students to veterans.