The Innovation Journalism (InJo) Conference at Stanford kicked off yesterday.

Gathering 100+ journalists, academics and the like to scrutinize the telling of the innovation story makes for a lively dialog.

The opening session featured David Nordfors, founder of InJo, interviewing Krishna Bharat, the creator of Google News. Dubbed a “fireside chat,” I’m pleased to report both participants passed on the cardigan sweater (and no one lit the Duraflame log).

Quite frankly, I wasn’t sure what to expect.

Putting Google on this stage struck me akin to Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao keynoting an ACLU dinner.

But everyone was cordial if not downright polite.

Bharat started by sharing how the 9/11 tragedy served as the catalyst for Google News. He realized it took considerable effort and time to gather a cross-section of stories on the attack. That backdrop gave rise to Google News.

Nordfors tried to nudge Bharat out of his comfort zone and Timothy Dickinson from Rolling Stone probed about Google’s responsibility to the business of journalism. While Bharat stayed on script for the most part, I thought there were a few comments that offered hints on where Google is taking the platform.

One quick caveat - I did not record the session and my note-taking is not industrial grade. I’ve done my best to capture Bharat’s words.

Bharat: Journalists should worry about creating content and leave it to others to get the content to the audience.

My Take: By leave it to others, I wasn’t sure if he meant a publication’s businesspeople or companies like Google. Regardless, journalists do worry about this issue since the online distribution of their content has undermined revenue generation and pink-slipped so many of their compadres.

One element that doesn’t get a lot of discussion is the more experienced journalists end up in the line of fire because of their higher salaries. During my morning workshop, Peter Lewis who many may remember from his Fortune days but is now a Knight Fellow in Journalism at Stanford, mentioned that CNN cut their entire science staff. As a result, the media property is forced to cover a crisis like the BP oil spill with generalists.

Bharat: Once you intersperse hard news with everything else, it’s tough for a publication to distinguish itself.

My Take: Google believes the hard news biz will go the way of auto manufacturing; i.e., a few deep-pocketed publishers with scale will own the space. I got the sense that Google anticipates the bulk of consolidation in the publishing industry has yet to occur. Now there’s a sobering thought.

Bharat: The process for purchasing journalism needs to become easier and simpler.

My Take: This one perplexed me. I’ve never been stumped by a publication’s subscription form, this from a person called “mechanically declined” by his brother. On the other hand, I got the vibe that Google aspires to become the PayPal for digital content.

If you’re interested in a deeper look, Mark Glaser interviewed Bharat back in February in the MediaShift story “Google News to Publishers: Let’s Make Love Not War.”

You can track the conference through Wednesday on Twitter at #injo7.  

One last point to share on Day 1 of the conference -

Nordfors explained that his program has been renamed the Stanford Center of Innovation and Communication.

The name change recognizes that the ecosystem surrounding innovation and communicating to the outside world encompasses a range of players, including PR.

After the dust settles from the conference, I hope to get time with Nordfors for an interview on his program and the general topic of storytelling.

Back in October, I resurrected the “Iron Reporter” to compare how two different publications covered Siemens’ high-speed train in Russia.

It was interesting to see the two reporters, Andrew E. Kramer from The New York Times and Paul Glader from The Wall Street Journal, take distinctly different paths in their storytelling.

Both pieces reflected the quality one would expect from two of the more prominent newspapers in the country.

But I did take a jab at Glader wondering why the Journal would “go through the trouble and expense to fly Mr. Glader from New York to Russia” for a story that appeared one month after the news was in the public domain.

I now have my answer.

Glader was good enough to drop me a line which provided the context.

It turns out that he had traveled to Russia on a personal vacation; i.e., his own dime, so the Journal did not fly him to Russia.

Instead, he wrote on the Siemens’ high-speed train as well as on St. Petersburg for the Times’ travel section to simply add to the learning experience during his travels.

In addition, the piece was earmarked for the Journal’s Marketplace section, not the front page where long-form narrative still lives.

This explains why the investment picture (global spend on the train biz) served as a major theme in the story. And why much of the “texture” from his journey on the infamous Red Arrow train didn’t make the final story aside from a quote from the Red Arrow’s captain.

Obviously, Ishmael’s Corner doesn’t benefit from an ombudsman (not in the 2010 budget) but I can still hear the ombudsman’s voice calling out my decision to highlight one of his Glader’s personal tweets as a bit of a cheap shot.

That was unfair and I apologize.

I’ve got the SlideShare religion.

Ironically, the use of slides, so often associated with mind-numbing - if not sleep-inducing - oral presentations, makes for a terrific storytelling platform for reading.

Earlier in the year, I posted on “Telling a Story Through Visual Means” that reverse-engineered a charticle in WIRED Magazine.

In a sense, SlideShare encompasses the same concept as a charticle, bringing together visuals and words to tell a story.

But unlike a charticle, SlideShare doesn’t require pure artistry (although artistry will certainly enhance the final product).

For business, the slide platform allows you to craft a story in a form that the reader can consume in a minute or two or three. The crisp pace of a SlideShare deck often comes from the actual type serving as the visual.

I would be remiss if I didn’t also highlight the benefits that come from SlideShare fitting under the social media umbrella. 

You can’t tag or follow a charticle.  

We’re putting greater emphasis on this communications vehicle for both our clients and ourselves. In fact, you can view the Agency’s credentials story which just went live on SlideShare.

Many thanks to our Singapore office, which did the heavy lifting on creating the credentials deck.

We believe it tells our story in a fashion that brings out our unique way of thinking and personality, deploying the techniques of storytelling - conversational, fun with language, etc. - that we’ve been evangelizing for some time.

Let us know what you think.

Sidenote: While there are hundreds, perhaps thousands, of outstanding stories on Slideshare, one in particular, “Shift Happens,” provided much of our inspiration. There’s a reason this deck has almost 1 million views.