Shameless self-promotion

I'm unable to attend because I'm allergic to multimillion-dollar opinion manufacturing machines. Journalists should be too, considering that your newspaper's very own ombudsman had this to say last year:

But the newspaper also should bring the same skepticism to the Locke information machine that it does to other powerful institutions. Reporters should resist the temptation to go to Hood and Co. for the easy conservative quote and look instead for other voices from the right. The Locke Foundation reports and other information should be scrutinized to separate propaganda from fact. And the organization should be regarded not just as a resource -- a word used both by Christensen and Martinez -- but as an opinion manufacturer that is itself a story.

What we have here are a number of political reporters giving legitimacy to a conference sponsored by an organization whose primary focus is manipulating the media in pursuit of a right wing political agenda.

That's the shameless part as far as I'm concerned.