This evening I went to a * Journalism.co.uk* event at Imperial College featuring Clyde Bentley, who founded MyMissourian.com at the University of Missouri, along with Guardian blogs editor Kevin Anderson and Robin Hamman of the BBC blogs project.

This “midwestern mafia”, as Kevin described the American-accented panel, talked about who Robin called “stuff” to avoid the dread phrases “UGC” and “citizen journalism”. And it was great stuff as you would expect from that panel.

Robin explained the BBC Manchester Blog Project, which is encouraging bloggers to use non-BBC platforms like Blogger and Flickr but to use the tag “bbcmanchesterblog” to draw alert the BBC to new material. Blogging gives journalists “contact, context and content”, he said.

Kevin described the Guardian’s new Travel site as the first itiration of “R2″, the relaunch which will bring interactivity from the margins to the centre of the Guardian’s online operations.

Blogging at 1:45am on a school night is not good, so more details will follow tomorrow.

I’ve just come home from White City where I was a guest on BBC Five Live’s Pods & Blogs with Chris Vallance and Rhod Sharp. If you’re still up at the unsocial hour of 2am, you can listen to me provide several shameless plugs for this blog. (listen online)