11:00 AM
to 12:00 PM
Open for News: Turning Journalism Inside Out
29 schedule::attendees
Location
Sheraton, N. Capitol View
eventtype Panel, Interactive
Speaker Ian Katz, Jemima Kiss
event::about What do you think the future of journalism should look like? As technology enables a new era of both journalism and media business, both are being redefined through new tools and practices. Activists, dissidents and whistleblowers have a global platform for protest, and journalists can tap an unprecedented range and depth of sources. But what are the best models for sharing information and collaborating through the internet? Information may want to be free, but how should it be organised? And what do the mechanisms of networked journalism and collaboration look like? Journalists, and the organisations they work for, need to incorporate new technologies and adapt the ways they work, breaking down the walls between themselves and readers and placing themselves at the centre of the conversation. What are the limitations of existing tools? How does journalism need to adapt, and how could a network of collaboration help that transformation? What have been the most successful examples of open journalism so far? As discussion over the neutrality of the internet intensifies, perhaps we should consider a new, non-commercial internet space free from government intervention - a new interpretation of the fourth estate. A digital public space where copyright and collaboration are reinvented. What can journalism and the media learn from successful 'openness' campaigns of the web, of business and open government?
event::tags Core Conversation
12:30 PM
to 1:30 PM
The Death of the Death of Longform Journalism
53 schedule::attendees
Location
Sheraton, N. Capitol View
eventtype Panel, Interactive
Speaker Max Linsky, Evan Ratliff
event::about The web was supposed to kill longform journalism. And it almost did. For years, conventional wisdom held that for text to work online, it had to be short and digestible. Nobody had the time to read 5,000 words on a web browser, and fewer still were willing to pay for the privilege. But at the same moment that many publishers scaled back their longform work, or abandoned it altogether, a new audience of readers emerged thanks to innovative apps like Instapaper, Read It Later, and Readaility. Turns out, the problem wasn’t that the stories were too long. People love stories! The problem was the delivery method—we finally had the tools to read pieces when, how, and where we wanted. This panel will discuss: what those tools are, how they’re being used, how some publishers are taking advantage of them, how other publishers are failing to take advantage of them, how the digital reading experience will continue to evolve, why journalists will always be the core audience for longform journalism, the iPad and the Kindle, Instapaper and Readability, and whether or not anyone is making any money from this stuff. This panel will not discuss: the upside of paginating long stories.
event::tags Core Conversation, #longform
3:30 PM
to 4:30 PM
Do Tablets Dream of Electric News?
37 schedule::attendees
Location
Sheraton, N. Capitol View
eventtype Panel, Interactive
Speaker Jennifer Brook, Erin Sparling
event::about News organizations are investing a lot of faith and hope into news apps for tablets. Although they have embraced the iPad in different ways, similar design, product, and user experience problems have surfaced. What strategies must be applied to craft design experiences that are more illustrious than the browser? Through taming APIs, feeds, and algorithms, can they entice readers, seasoned and new to make an app a part of their daily news consumption ritual? With stakeholders from both the print and digital world, how do teams surface, manage, and design for divergent expectations? We have made it through the launch, and subsequent updates to, the first news iPad apps and will discuss design considerations and constraints we’ve encountered through this process.
event::tags Core Conversation, #newsapps
5:00 PM
to 6:00 PM
Why Journalists Need to Think Like Geeks
42 schedule::attendees
Location
Sheraton, N. Capitol View
eventtype Panel, Interactive
Speaker Blake Eskin
event::about Many print journalists, even those who resisted change, are trying to embrace the digital future. Twenty-year veterans take up social media after taking a buyout, and journalism programs now give aspiring reporters basic multimedia skills. But a facility with Twitter or Soundslides combined with an occupational knack for asking questions won't always add up to the skills necessary to redesign a Web site or create an app. The truth is, journalists and programmers think in fundamentally different ways—words vs. code; stories vs. systems—and often have a hard time communicating and collaborating. And the problem is asymmetrical; most programmers can quickly grasp enough about journalism to work with journalists, but it's much harder to get, say, a midlevel editor to understand the basics of software development or database design. I often find myself wishing I could recommend a course to that colleague or to an unemployed journalist that would teach them how the other half thinks. Most of us have had to muddle through on our own, until we have a road to Damascus moment. But there's got to be a better way. How can we teach journalists to think about technology?
event::tags Core Conversation, #journalistsgeeks
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