The fifth annual Online News Association conference is being held this year in San Francisco and includes an amazing line-up of speakers and networking opportunities.  At the top of the conference, participants had already learned about Twisten.fm (Pandora’s cousin – a social media site for music), Muckrack (a journalist-only Twitter feed), and caught a quick glimpse of Yahoo!’s new editorial style guide. We collected a ton of marketing shwag and chatted with the editorial director of CNNMoney.com.

In the interest of objectivity, all media organizations provide great networking opportunities, but the information we obtain and relationships we forge at the Online News Association conference are invaluable to the livelihood of our business with respect to media relations.

This conference poses a question: Do you mourn the death of traditional media? According to Leo Laporte, host of ”This Week in Tech,” a netcast on TWiT.tv, the answer is “no.”  He says to embrace the transformation and remember that the public will always need great storytellers.

Sessions on the horizon include “Producing Content with Your Phone” and “From Flip to Web Via iMovie” – topics that are sure to shape the online news industry.

Check out the full speech, included below.