From Town Criers to Bloggers: How Will Journalism Survive the Internet Age?

Can News Media Survive the Internet Age?
Competition, Consumer Protection, and First Amendment Perspectives

Federal Trade Commission
December 1 and 2, 2009

Dec 1 webcast

Consumers are increasingly turning to the Internet for news and information. Advertisers are moving ads to online sites and scaling back on ad buys as a result of the recession, and news organizations are struggling with large debts that were acquired during better times. As a result, some are questioning how journalism will evolve in the future.

The workshop will consider a wide range of issues, including: the economics of journalism in print and online; the wide variety of new business and non-profit models for journalism online; factors relevant to the new economic realities for news organizations, such as behavioral and other targeted online advertising, online news aggregators, and bloggers; and the ways in which the costs of journalism could be reduced without reducing quality.

The diverse group of participants who will discuss these issues at the workshop include Rupert Murdoch, Chairman and CEO of News Corp., Arianna Huffington, Co-Founder and Editor-in-Chief of The Huffington Post, and Aneesh Chopra, Assistant to the President, Associate Director and Chief Technology Officer for the Office of Science and Technology of the Executive Office of the President of the United States. Other panelists include representatives from E.W. Scripps Co., The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Yahoo!, Google, the National Newspaper Association, the National Association of Black Journalists, Hearst Television, National Public Radio, Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the Associated Press, ThomsonReuters, Propublica, Blogher.com, NorthwestCitizen.com, the Knight Foundation, the University of Chicago, the Association of National Advertisers, the Center for Digital Democracy, and the Media Access Project.

Day 1 - Tuesday, December 1, 2009

8:00 am Doors Open and Security Check-in*

9:00 am Welcome Jon Leibowitz
Chairman of the Federal Trade Commission

9:15 am Remarks Paul Steiger
Editor-in-Chief, President and CEO, ProPublica
Former Managing Editor, The Wall Street Journal

9:30 am Remarks Rick Edmonds
Media Business Analyst, The Poynter Institute
Co-author, The State of the News Media 2009

9:45 am Remarks Rupert Murdoch
Chairman and CEO, News Corp.

10:05 am The State of Journalism Today and Tomorrow
Panelists:

Mark Contreras
Chairman of the Executive Committee,
The Newspaper Association of America;
Senior Vice President/Newspapers, E.W. Scripps Co.

Martin Kaiser
President, American Society of News Editors
Editor and Senior Vice President Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Jonathan Knee
Director, Media Program, Columbia Business School;
Senior Managing Director, Evercore Partners

Nina Link
President and CEO
Magazine Publishers of America

Bryan Monroe
Visiting Professor, Medill School of Journalism, Northwestern University;
Former Vice President and Editorial Director,
Ebony and Jet

Hamrin Professor of Media Economics and Director of the Media Management and Transformation Centre, Jonkoping University, Sweden

Tonda Rush
Of Counsel, King & Ballow
On Behalf of National Newspaper Association

David Westphal
Executive in Residence, Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism,
University of Southern California;
Former Washington Editor, McClatchy Newspapers

Fred Young
Retired Senior Vice President of News
Hearst Television Inc.

11:35 am Remarks
Arianna Huffington
Co-Founder and Editor-in-Chief, The Huffington Post

12:00 pm - 1:30pm Lunch Break

1:30 pm Presentation
Leonard Downie
Vice President at Large and Former Executive Editor
The Washington Post

1:45 pm Presentation
Lem Lloyd
Vice President, Channel Sales Yahoo!

2:00 pm Presentation
Josh Cohen
Senior Business Product Manager
Google

2:15 pm Emerging Business Models for Journalism
Panelists:

Chris Ahearn
President, Reuters Media
Thomson Reuters

Mark Bide
Rightscom Limited
Project Director, Automated Content Access Protocol

Steven Brill
Co-Founder
Journalism Online, LLC

Lauren Rich Fine
Research Director
ContentNext Media

Jeff Jarvis
Associate Professor, Director of the Interactive Program
City University of New York, Graduate School of Journalism

Srinandan Kasi
Vice President and General Counsel
Associated Press

Danny Sullivan
Editor-in-Chief
Search Engine Land

Robert Thomson
Managing Editor
The Wall Street Journal

3:45 pm Presentation
Mike Bloxham
Director of Insight and Research
Center for Media Design
Ball State University

4:00 pm Presentation
Susan Athey
Professor of Economics
Harvard University

4:15 pm Presentation
David Evans
Visiting Professor, Faculty of Laws
University College London;
Vice Chairman of LECG Europe

4:30pm Online Advertising and Consumer Demand Trends
Panelists:

Barbara Bacci Mirque
Executive Vice President, Communications and Best Practices
Association of National Advertisers

Mike Bloxham
Director of Insight and Research
Center for Media Design
Ball State University

Jeff Chester
Executive Director
Center for Digital Democracy

Pam Horan
President
Online Publishers Association

Joe Laszlo
Director of Research
Interactive Advertising Bureau

John Meyer
Director of Digital Media
WTOP and Federal News Radio

5:30pm Conclusion

Day 2 - Wednesday, December 2, 2009

8:00 am Doors Open and Security Check-in*

9:00 am Welcome Jon Leibowitz
Chairman of the Federal Trade Commission

9:15 am Presentation
James Hamilton
Charles S. Sydnor Professor of Public Policy Professor of Political Science and Economics Director, DeWitt Wallace Center for Media and Democracy, Sanford School of Public Policy
Duke University

9:30 am Presentation
Matthew Gentzkow
Professor of Economics
Neubauer Family Faculty Fellow
Booth School of Business
University of Chicago

9:45 am Presentation Karen Dunlap
President and CEO
The Poynter Institute

10:00 am Public- and Foundation-Funded Journalism
Panelists:
Joaquin Alvarado
Senior Vice President for Diversity and Innovation
Corporation for Public Broadcasting

Tom Leonard
University Librarian and Professor in the Graduate School of Journalism, University of California, Berkeley

Charles Lewis
Executive Editor of the Investigative Reporting Workshop
American University School of Communication

Mark MacCarthy
Adjunct Professor
Communication, Culture and Technology Program
Georgetown University

Jon McTaggart
Senior Vice President and Chief Operating Officer
American Public Media

Eric Newton
Vice President, Journalism Program
Knight Foundation

Vivian Schiller
President and CEO
National Public Radio

Josh Silver
Executive Director
Free Press

11:45 am - 1:00pm Lunch Break

1:00 pm Reducing the Costs of Journalism
Panelists:

Bill Adair
Editor, PolitiFact
Washington Bureau Chief, St. Petersburg Times

Bill Allison
Editorial Director, Sunlight Foundation

Bill Buzenberg
Executive Director
The Center for Public Integrity

Aneesh Chopra
Assistant to the President, Chief Technology Officer and Associate Director for the Office of Science & Technology of the Executive Office of the President

James Hamilton
Charles S. Sydnor Professor of Public Policy;
Professor of Political Science and Economics Director
DeWitt Wallace Center for Media and Democracy
Sanford School of Public Policy, Duke University

President and Chief Executive Officer
Public Radio International

Aron Pilhofer
Editor, Interactive News Technologies
The New York Times
Co-Founder, DocumentCloud

Eric Umansky
Senior Editor, ProPublica
Co-Founder, DocumentCloud

2:30 pm Presentation from the Knight Foundation Commission on
The Information Needs of Communities in a Democracy

Reed Hundt
Senior Advisor, McKinsey & Company
Former Chairman,
Federal Communications Commission

2:45 pm Engaging and Informing Consumers in the Internet Age
Panelists:

Sandra Ball-Rokeach
Professor and Director of the Communication Technology and Community Program, Annenberg School of Communication & Journalism, University of Southern California

James Gaines
Editor-in-Chief,
FLYP Media
Former Editor, Time

Jon Miller
Chief Digital Officer
News Corp.

Debra Osofsky
National Director, News and Broadcast
American Federation of Television and Radio Artists

Tom Rosenstiel
Director, Project for Excellence in Journalism
Pew Research Center

Jason Seiken Senior Vice President
PBS Interactive

Linda Solomon
Photojournalist
Committee Member, Citizens to Save the Eccentric

Kathy Times
President
National Association of Black Journalists

4:00 pm Presentation
Lisa George
Assistant Professor of Economics
Hunter College

4:15 pm The New News

Panelists:

Jim Brady
Allbritton Communications

Christopher Callahan
Dean, Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication
Arizona State University
Elisa Camahort Page
Co-Founder and COO, BlogHer

Bill Densmore
Vice President, Director, and Co-Founder
CircLabs Inc.

Andrew Jay Schwartzman
President and Chief Executive Officer
Media Access Project

John Servais
Founder
NorthwestCitizen

5:30 pm Concluding Remarks

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The Federal Trade Commission announced December 1 and 2, 2009, as the dates on which it will begin a series of workshops titled "From Town Criers to Bloggers: How Will Journalism Survive the Internet Age?" The workshops previously were scheduled to begin on September 15, 2009.

The workshops will bring competition, consumer protection, and First Amendment perspectives to bear on the financial, technological, and other challenges facing the news industry as consumers increasingly turn to the Internet for free news and information, advertisers increasingly move their ads onto online sites and reduce advertising buys as a result of the recession, and news organizations struggle with large debt that was taken on when times were better.

Several large daily newspapers across the country have declared bankruptcy in the past year, and others have imposed significant cuts in staff and other expenditures to lower their costs dramatically, although some smaller community newspapers may continue to have local monopolies. News magazines also have seen significant drop-offs in advertising revenues, despite relatively stable circulation numbers. Broadcast television news and radio news broadcasts have lost audience shares over the past decade, while cable and Internet audiences have grown. The news media and the practice of journalism are in transition, as evidenced by multiple innovative models for journalism that have emerged in the past few years.

The workshops will consider a wide range of issues, including: the economics of journalism and how those economics are playing out on the Internet and in print; the wide variety of new business and non-profit models for journalism online; factors relevant to the new economic realities for news organizations, such as behavioral and other targeted online advertising, online news aggregators, and bloggers; and the variety of governmental policies - including antitrust, copyright, and tax policy - that have been raised as possible means of finding new ways for journalism to thrive. Witnesses will include journalists and other representatives of news organizations, privacy experts, direct marketers, online advertisers, academics, new media representatives (such as bloggers and local news Web sites), and consumer advocates. An agenda for the December 1 and 2, 2009, workshops will be circulated at a later time.

MEDIA CONTACT:
Office of Public Affairs
202-326-2180

STAFF CONTACT:
Susan DeSanti
Director, Office of Policy Planning
202-326-2210