• The port should have on its best face today as some 100 travel agents will be here to visit a trade show at the cruise terminal. The show will educate the agents about the tourism opportunities available to cruise ship passengers departing from Jacksonville. Forty hospitality and tourism companies will showcase their products and services during the “Showcase Jacksonville” event. The agents were invited by Carnival Cruise Lines and will tour the Greater Jacksonville area over the weekend.
• Tickets for the Atlantic Coast Conference football championship game go on sale next Tuesday and you’ll see the big RV which promotes the game around town visiting media outlets.
• Children, families and fans attending tomorrow morning’s opening session of Jaguars training camp can also learn about child safety through a partnership between the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children and the NFL Players Association. The kids can participate in activities and interactive games and parents can receive a card containing biographical data, a photo and a fingerprint of their child or children. The event will be held from 9 a.m.-noon near the practice fields at Alltel Stadium. Info: 633-2265.
• Some Florida Bar attorneys are gaining insight into the changing state of news. Robert Dees, a Jacksonville attorney and member of the Bar’s media and communications law committee, said newspaper editors have told the committee that online blogs are rapidly gaining popularity – and papers plan to get in on the action. “Traditional media are having to become more blog-like because it makes sense,” said Dees. “It’s not going to be as polished as your typical article, but people like that.”
• Speaking of blogs and the broadening scope of media, E.B. White had some interesting opinions on the matter. The “Charlotte’s Web” and “The Elements of Style” author once provided some food for thought on television, long before the Internet became a pervasive form of media. “Television hangs on the questionable theory that whatever happens anywhere should be sensed everywhere,” according to White. “If everyone is going to be able to see everything, in the long run all sights may lose whatever rarity value they once possessed, and it may well turn out that people, being able to see and hear practically everything, will be specially interested in almost nothing.”