Snowbird Resort, outside Salt Lake City: 135 women gather to examine the state of journalism and their role in its survival. JAWS is Journalism & Women Symposium begun in 1985. Members include three who sued the New York Times in the 1970s over unequal treatment of women journalists.
The only other time I passed through Utah was in a green VW stationwagon, driving across country with a college friend. We stopped by a roadside stand and bought the juiciest, most luscious peaches I ever ate, before and since.

But this is a different Utah. Women journalists are gathered at the Snowbird resort at 8,000 feet in the mountains outside of Salt Lake City for an annual conference and to celebrate 25 years of their group's existence -- all at a time when journalism, at least in its traditional forms, is lurching precariously, while the new forms are not yet up on steady legs. They are called the Journalism & Women Symposium.

Molly IvinsTonight at dinner, they read a short appreciation by Maya Angelou of Texas journalist Molly Ivins. Molly Ivins Shook the Walls with her Clarion Call appeared in the Washington Post on Feb. 2, 2007 shortly after she died.

I remember when Molly Ivins came and spoke to the Alaska Press Club in Anchorage. I remember that she talked about how important serious journalism is, far away from Washington DC and power centers that are typically crawling with reporters. She was inspiring.

Just looking around the room of 135 women at the JAWS opening dinner, and listening to their 10-second (literally) self-introductions, was a flash through journalism history, including the law suit against The New York Times in the 1970s for unequal treatment of its women reporters. Nan Robertson, a Pulitzer Prize winner from the Times, told the story in the book The Girls in the Balcony: Women, Men and the New York Times.

I'll spend time tomorrow with Margie Freivogel, the founding editor of the online news organization St. Louis Beacon, launched with a cadre of fellow journalists after she took a buy out from the St Louis Post Dispatch after a 30 year career there.

There are sessions on entrepreneurial journalism, multimedia production, dangerous assignments and one-on-one career counseling.

Anyway, it was a long day of travel, so I close with an evening shot of the mountains, bathed in gold. I miss Alaska, but this is lovely!

Sunset, Utah