Bob Levey, the self-declared legend

This session was by far the most entertaining and was also very informative. I went into this session having entertained the notion of someday undertaking some column writing and left sure that I would soon be a part of it.

Mr. Levey was a journalist at The Washington Post for 35 years -- he covered hard news including sports for 15 of those -- and has also written three books. He has a really booming radio voice and also worked in broadcast for eight years. Mr. Levey addressed the responsibility all columnists have and he also praised the opportunity of being a voice to a community. He boasted about having raised $13 million through fundraising for charities in his time and said this demonstrates how a columnist can have an impact.

He went through the daily rigors of coming up with a topic and compared and contrasted column writing to news and feature writing, emphasizing the importance of having first done the latter. He reminded us that -- while the stylistic rules still apply for the most -- columnists are free to address matters that are too unprofessional to appear in a news story and mockingly pointed out that you don't have to have "a nutgraph" as in feature writing where you tie everything together.

Levey joked about his age and told us a few times that none of us should be writing sex columns because we are inexperienced. His l0ve for journalism is still palpable and he claims to read six or seven newspapers each day.

I loved this session.

Jim Mustian