I’ve been sitting here for the past 40 minutes trying to pull together some final thoughts on Nashville Is Talking.

Now an hour. NIT represented for so many people a time when they found their voice resonating with others. Sometimes it was in harmony, and sometimes it wasn’t.

For WKRN NIT represented a new frontier in opening up a two-way conversation on the raw values and interests shared by the segment of our viewers who were quickly embracing an empowering new medium.

For me, NIT represented both those things.

I had heard about NIT before moving back to Tennessee from Northern Virginia. I was working on a political campaign as the state’s first paid political blogger when I heard about WKRN launching what was then a bold experiment. The crazy idea was to have a blog.

It doesn’t sound so crazy today.

Today, the use of blogs as a two-way channel of communication with the community is not enough. The online conversation is getting closer and closer to realtime through social media like Twitter and Facebook, and now live streaming directly from your phone.

In recent years, I spent what time I could at the station from other duties to move NIT from a simple MoveableType blog aggregator to a hub of Nashville’s conversation in photos, videos, tweets and other social media. We experimented with live streaming and live interaction, and we broke through television by bringing the online discussion from a newsroom computer into homes through our live newscasts.

I’ll save the subject of challenges facing legacy media for another time, but I want to also mention a few names that instantly come to mind when I reflect back on the lineage of monks who shepherded the scrolls from cave to cave.

• Mike Sechrist whose decision to venture into blogs sent ripples that continue to travel throughout the industry today.
• Terry Heaton who helped the industry find a language to make sense out of the convergence of two worlds.
• Brittney Gilbert whose genuine voice resonated and empowered a community of bloggers.
• Gwen Kinsey whose vision for what was to be was unfortunately challenged by bankruptcy and other challenges that continue to plague legacy media.

There are many more names and many more memories, but it is now two hours into me writing this, and it’s time for me to jump into my morning commute. I still feel like I’m nowhere near giving NIT the final words it deserves. And so I leave it here, undone… for now.

Here are some other thoughtful reflections:

• On Friday, the Talk stops - Jack Lail
• Farewell, Nashville Is Talking - Joe Powell
• so long my friend : nashville no longer talking - Gavin Richardson