Journalism and Cyberspace

November 5 and 12, 1998

How has American journalism been affected by digital technologies? What new skills and new knowledge are needed by reporters and editors assigned to cover the “cyber-beat”? How have traditional newspaper formats been altered, challenged, enhanced by the World Wide Web? Do the Web and other aspects of the digital future threaten the very existence of newspapers in the long term?

November 5 and 12, 1998
4:00–6:00 p.m.

Bartos Theater
MIT Media Lab
20 Ames Street

Speakers

Reid Ashe is president and publisher of the Tampa Tribune. His work includes an effort to harness multiple media — print, video and Internet — in the service of community journalism.

Hiawatha Bray writes a column on computers and cyberspace for The Boston Globe.

James Carey is CBS Professor of International Journalism in the Graduate School of Journalism at Columbia University and Adjunct Professor at Union Theological Seminary. He is the author ofCommunication As Culture and numerous reviews, essays and monographs. He was Dean of the College of Communications at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign from 1979 to 1992.

Julian Dibbell, formerly a contributor to TIME Magazine and before that a columnist at The Village Voice, has been writing about cyberculture for the last ten years. He is the author of My Tiny Life, a literary ethnography about the online society LambdaMOO, to be published in January 1999.

John Driscoll has been Editor-in-Residence at the MIT Media Lab for the past four years. Previously, he worked at The Boston Globe for 40 years in a variety of news positions, including seven years as Editor.

Rob Fixmer is the Technology News Editor of The New York Times, responsible for coverage of computer technologies, cyberspace and telecommunications. In 1995, he created CyberTimes, the original content area of the New York Times on the Web, and served as CyberTimes Editor until November 1997

Amy Harmon covers cyberspace for The New York Times.

Ingrid Volkmer is Professor of Media and Communication at the University of Augsburg, Germany, and Director of Global Media Consultants Ltd, based in London. Her book about the impact of CNN on global communication, Between Universalism and Particularism: Global Spheres of Mediation, has just been published.

Summary

Covering Cyberspace — November 5, 1998

• Moderator: John Driscoll, MIT Media Lab
• Julian Dibbell, author of My Tiny Life
• Amy Harmon, New York Times
• Hiawatha Bray, Boston Globe
• Audience Discussion

Digital Journalism — November 12, 1998

• Moderator: James Carey, Columbia University
• Reid Ashe, Tampa Tribune
• Ingrid Volkmer, Univ. of Augsburg (Germany)
• Rob Fixmer, New York Times
• Audience Discussion