This past week we were honored to receive a fellowship ¬ and an invitation to attend a national conference ¬ from the Investigative Reporters and Editors, an association of journalists based at the University of Missouri.

To say we had heady company at the conference, which was held at the Fairmont Hotel in New Orleans, Louisiana, would be something of an understatement.

For three days we got to rub shoulders with, and attend seminars given by, esteemed journalists from CNN, ABC's Prime Time Live, The Miami Herald, The Washington Post, The New York Times, Boston Globe, and CBS News, among others.

Pete Hamill, most recently the managing editor of The New York Daily News, delivered the conference's keynote address.

Though our impressions from the conference are many, one of the things that really stuck with us was how removed ¬ and how wistful about it¬ some of our best journalists are from shoe-leather reporting.

True, investigative reporters more and more are relying on computers to retrieve the information they need, but as the conference unfolded, we heard a number of speakers tell those in attendance that they should do things like "attend meetings" in the communities they cover and "make themselves a real presence" on their beats.

That sounds like sound advice to us... in fact, it sounds much like the advice we received when we first arrived at your local community newspapers.

It's nice to know that what's closest to home is still considered the cutting edge in this age of technological advantage.

Daniel J. McCue