Summit takes hard look at future of journalism

Rapidly advancing technology may be to blame for the news industry's present predicament, but the same digital tools promise a bright future if the sector can harness them to deliver customers the content they want in the manner they prefer. That was the general message from panelists during the first day of the UC Berkeley Media Technology Summit on Wednesday, sponsored by the Graduate School of Journalism and hosted at Google's headquarters in Mountain View. Such an approach requires a dramatic shift in thinking, however, and raises some troubling questions for journalists and publishers. Key to survival in the digital media age is rapidly responding to the preferences that consumers reveal every time they click a link, view an ad, read a story or post a comment, said Michael Franklin, professor of computer science at UC Berkeley. He is also the founder of Truviso, a San Mateo company that creates tools for analyzing consumer data.