mediabistro.com's THINK{drinks} series is a series of intimate, invitation-only gatherings on a timely topic relating to the media community. It is a salon-style gathering meant to inspire provocative discourse about the way we read, report and publish stories. Each month, the THINK{drinks} panel will be recorded and the transcript will be edited and posted on mediabistro.com for the record and to inspire further on-line discussion. (Scroll down for the topic schedule.)

September
The Pink Ghetto: The real dope on writing and editing for women's magazines.

Panelists:

Laurie Abraham, Executive Editor of Elle magazine, former features editor at Mirabella and contributing editor to Health magazine.

Chandra Czape, Founder of Ed2010, a networking group for young magazine editors, and Deputy Articles Editor at Cosmopolitan.

Debbie Stoller, Founder/Editor in Chief of Bust magazine.

John Godfrey, senior editor at Glamour and single dad.

If you would like to register to attend any of these panels, become a mediabistro.com member, and contact David (specifying which one) to be put on the invitation list.

Join AvantGuild, mediabistro.com's new membership association, and we'll save you a spot at an upcoming THINK{drinks} panel. AvantGuild members also qualify for reduced admission rates to THINK{drinks} and other mediabistro.com events, plus they can take advantage of our discounted health insurance and lots of other great services that are coming soon.

THINK{drinks} Topics for 2001:
(note: topic subject to change due to news events and natural disasters)
October
Fuzzy Borders: Is the News for Sale?

November
Covering Bush: Political Journalism, Post-Clintons.

Past THINK{drinks}:

March
Media Culpa: Can the Business Media Cause a Recession?

Our March panel drew 70 members of the business media to The Half King bar. James Surowiecki, a financial columnist for The New Yorker, moderated a panel that included Christopher Byron, veteran financial columnist for Bloomberg and The New York Observer, Malcolm Gladwell, a New Yorker writer and author of the best-selling book The Tipping Point, and Geoff Lewis, a long-time business journalist who recently lost his job at CNBC during a company downsizing. Transcript

May
Heroes, Hellions, Hedonists: the Making of Modern Sports Figures
How have we changed the way the public views athletes?

The gloves came off for mediabistro.com's second official THINK{drinks} panel. Held at the Half King Bar in West Chelsea, nearly fifty sports journalists from ESPN magazine to the New York Times gathered over beers to listen and discuss whether the press has stepped too far into the personal lives of players. Alan Schwarz, a senior writer for Baseball America magazine and sports history guru, moderated the panel, which included Steve Jacobson, a reporter for Newsday who has covered sports since the Sixties; Alan Grant, a former NFL player and reporter for ESPN magazine; and Sam Marchiano, a Fox Sports NFL reporter and correspondent for the National Sports Report on Fox Sports Net. Photos

August
Beyond Adrenaline: Death-defying stories and hair-raising ethical dilemmas from high-risk journalists.

Our August THINK{drinks} panel focused on journalists whose stories demand that they risk great physical danger, whether it is covering a war or working as a prison guard. We delved into what drives these reporters to do their work. If you look back on the war reporting of journalists such as Ernie Pyle or George Orwell, you'll see that these writers almost never put themselves in their stories. But today, personal memoirs of adventure and risk in dangerous places have become a hot-selling genre. Some would argue that the stories often focus too much on the writer's personal risk-taking prowess and too little on the story they are covering. Does it detract from the journalism if a journalist focuses on their own risk over that of others? Are today's high-risk journalists doing it for the reader or to satisfy a personal desire? What are some of the most difficult ethical dilemmas they have faced on assignment, and when is an assignment too risky? Our panelists were Sebastian Junger, author of The Perfect Storm and magazine journalist covering war, mostly for Vanity Fair; Ted Conover, author of New Jack: Guarding Sing Sing; Stacy Sullivan, whose articles on Kosovo have appeared in Newsweek, The New York Times, and other publications; and Tuen Voeten, a photojournalist covering conflicts in the former Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Sudan, Rwanda, Chechnya, Sierra Leone, Haiti and Columbia. Our moderator was Mark Dennis, who has covered wars and conflict zones for Newsweek in Kosovo, Algeria, Chechnya, Northern Iraq, the Gulf, Sudan, Lebanon and Israel/Palestine.

THINK{drinks} Curator:
Rachel Lehmann-Haupt is a Manhattan-based freelance writer. She writes about business, technology, media and style. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, The New York Observer, Wired, Vogue, Self, Brill's Content, The Industry Standard and Business 2.0. During a stint as a staff writer at Business 2.0 she founded Salon 2.0, a live talk show and community event focusing on business and technology trends. As the curator of THINK{drinks}, she is working with Laurel Touby to bring this type of event to the media community.

Please contact Rachel with topic ideas and potential speakers at 212.691.3588.