Nieman narrative journo confab is history? *

Author and journalist Scott Martelle blogs that he's been told that the annual Nieman Conference on Narrative Journalism is shutting down. [* "Shutting down" was his original information, now revised to "suspension" of the conference.] There's no official word from the Nieman folks at Harvard. "This past March, attendance was relatively light, and few of the name tags listed newspapers under the attendees' names. It's an expensive conference to put on, and given the economic meltdown, my guess is money was the issue," says Martelle, who moderated a couple of panels this year.