Cit Media

I’m honored to be speaking at the upcoming Kosmopolis 2008 in Barcelona, Spain. The biennial gathering, held this year in late October, brings together an amazing group of people involved in literature and the arts. I’ll be part of a program on the future of journalism.

I’m honored to be giving a keynote talk at Highway Africa, which has become the biggest annual gathering of African journalists and has a strong element of how technology is changing journalism. A key theme this year is citizen journalism.

The conference has some scholarships available for working journalists. A link to the application is here.

Bill Moyers is headlining the National Conference on Media Reform in Minneapolis, and just gave a powerful pitch for network neutrality and why journalism’s future is key to the future of democracy. There’s a live stream, worth watching.

The conference is a gathering of mostly left-of-center media activists. That’s too bad in a way, because there are plenty of people on the political right who want media reform, too. They may want a different kind, and for different purposes. But there’s enough common ground that it would be valuable to have a more diverse community here.

Back to Moyers: “The press remains in denial of their role,” he accurately says. The big problem is not allowing competing narratives to emerge.

On Iraq, he again approvingly cites my former Knight Ridder (now McClatchy) colleagues who were the singular journalistic heroes in the Iraq war run-up. For the most part, “the Fourth Estate has become a Fifth Column” for the government, he says — a bit over the top but not enormously so, given what we saw during the media’s shabby recent performance.

He speaks powerfully of democracy’s reliance taming the grossest extremes of poverty and wealth, of not allowing the wealthy to control the law and the lawmakers. In this room he’s preaching — and he’s a former preacher, which is evident in his cadences — to a like-minded choir.

“It’s up to you to tell the truth about this country that we love,” he says.

I’m at the Berkman Center’s 10th Anniversary conference — amazing agenda and people.

Being a Berkman Fellow has been one of the joys of my recent years, getting to hang around with — and pick the brains of — a bunch of folks who are much smarter than I am and who possess knowledge and wisdom.

Here’s a page with webcasts of the event.

I’ll be participating in a workshop at Princeton University’s Center for Information Technology Policy May 14-15. You will be unsurprised to hear that the event is called “The Future of News.”

At UC Berkeley’s Journalism School tomorrow evening, there’s a Screening of “Citizen McCaw”:

the new documentary film about the journalism ethics battle and meltdown at the Santa Barbara News Press. The screening will be followed by a panel discussion on the state of journalism with former News Press Editor Jerry Roberts, “Citizen McCaw” director Sam Tyler and San Francisco Chronicle Editorial Page Editor John Diaz, moderated by journalism school professor Cynthia Gorney.

“Meltdown” is an understatement for what has happened at the Santa Barbara newspaper, a once-respected journal that has fallen under harsh times during the Wendy McCaw ownership.

If I were going to be in California tomorrow I’d be at this screening. If you’re in the neighborhood and have the time (and nontrivial but $50 admission going to the legal defense fund of people who were kicked out of the paper), please consider it.

I hope some of you can join us May 15-16 at Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society for the Berkman@10 Conference: The Future of the Internet. This gathering, marking the center’s 10th anniversary, is shaping up to be an extraordinary affair.

As a Berkman Fellow the past several years, I’ve had a chance to spend (not nearly enough) time with some great people who are doing some of the best work on understanding the Net’s already powerful impact on our lives. The May conference will, in part, offer a summary of where we are and where we may be going. As the conference home page asks: “In tracing the trajectory of the past and attempting to lean into the future, what are the contours of the moment we find ourselves in? What are the most important questions that will propel us into the next decade?”

Among the many, many great speakers will be our lunchtime keynoter on Friday, May 16 — someone who’ll need little introduction to regular readers of this blog. He is Joshua Micah Marshall, founder and editor of Talking Points Memo and several related political blogs. What he and his team do each day has become essential reading for people who care about politics and policy, and he recently was honored for his work with a truly high honor in journalism, the George Polk Award.

I’ll have the honor of introducing Josh Marshall. He has been a touchstone for my own work, and has shown one way forward for the journalism “by the people, for the people,” in which I so fervently believe.

Journalists and technologists will rub elbows from April 30 through May 3 in Sunnyvale, California, at a conference called “NewsTools 2008” — a gathering that promises to bring together people who really need to know each other better. Pro journalists don’t use the available technology smartly enough — though they’re improving at this — and tech folks have too little understanding of why journalism matters and why they should be helping create the next version of the craft.

I’ll be bringing some students from Arizona State University to the conference, which so far has a lot more journalists than techies signed up. If you’re in the latter group, please give some thought to participating. This is a great opportunity to help create a future we all know we need.

I’ll be visiting the Twin Cities for an event called New Media, New Standards: Ethics in Online Journalism, co-sponsored by the Society of Professional Journalists and Minnesota Public Radio. Hope to see some of you there…

Heading later today to Malysia for the 3rd Global Knowledge Conference, where I’m a speaker.