Mediabistro has just announced the lineup for its online Social Media Marketing Boot Camp. Among the many “speakers” is Lockhart Steele, founder of Curbed. Starting June 9th, a slew of social media experts will be guiding participants through the best ways to use the technology.

During Steele’s session – on July 21st – he’ll provide participants with an in-depth analysis of Curbed, while sharing his secrets to building a successful blog network.

Here’s the full lineup, and you can register here. And please note: It’s online, but clothes are still required.

Lockhart Steele with Jake Dobkin, Jonathan Butler, and Mark Josephson

“300 words, max…anything else, it’s an essay.” Those were the words of New York blogger Jake Dobkin at last night’s panel for The Future of Local Media.

The topic this month was “Local Journalism: What’s Cool In Your Hood?” But, the only thing the panelists could seem to agree upon was the more posts, the better — even when it means the death of any original journalism.

“We write 20 to 24 pieces of content a day,” said Jonathan Butler, founder of Brooklyn blog Brownstoner. “Generally all but three of those pieces are original reporting…Picture posts are great.”

Dobkin, who founded Gothamist in 2003, was definitely seeking to provoke his audience. When asked about the concept of pay walls for online publications, the young entrepreneur flippantly replied that this would be the best thing for his business. “Have them charge $20 for content! No one else will pay, but we will, and we will steal their stories,” he said. “That’s my two year plan.”

Behind the bluster, Dobkin has a point: Why pay for original content when blogs will aggregate it for their readers for free?

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We can confirm the rumors circulating: Lockhart Steele‘s foodie blog, Eater, will be at the center of a design overhaul starting tomorrow. (In fact, when we visited the site today we got this redirect message: “We’ve taken the liberty of redirecting you to http://ny.eater.com, in anticipation of something new coming this Friday. You can still access Eater NY at the original URL until then, but if you’d like to start adjusting bookmarks and the like, now is the time. As always, thanks for playing. – mgm’t”)

The new Eater will not only have a new look, but will include a more national spectrum, with correspondents in Miami and Vegas. Steele, who started Eater along with the NY real estate blog Curbed and fashion site Racked after he left his managing editor position at Gawker in 2007, has been slowly migrating his empire in a broader, less NYC-centric direction, while still keeping his headquarters and an official site focus on our busy city.

–by Drew Grant

After two years as publisher of Curbed, Kyle Crafton joins Sports Enthusiast Media as digital GM.

In January 2007, SEM purchased StatFox and Head2Head Sports to add to its portfolio that includes Daily Racing Form and Sports Eye Publications. In October of that same year, Arlington Capital Partners bought SEM.

Before joining Curbed, Crafton served as publisher and CFO of FishbowlNY’s parent company, mediabistro.com.