UC Berkeley Journalism - Events

We host public events with distinguished speakers from the media, politics, business and other fields. You can receive event notifications by mailing list, RSS feed, or iCal.

Many school-sponsored events are also webcast as streaming video, either live or as video archives. All events with associated video are listed on the Webcasts page. Currently featured: Jack Hitt: The Art of the Query and Mao's Revolution: What Remains.

Some J-School-sponsored events can also be viewed at UCTV (Real video format).

Many J-School-sponsored events are also available at webcast.berkeley.edu.

New-Media Minds Confront the Future

By Michiyo Yamada
MJ ‘00

More than 200 of the region’s top new-media entrepreneurs and enthusiasts gathered at the Graduate School of Journalism’s second annual new media conference. During the day-long event on March 10, the diverse group tackled tough issues ranging from ethics to the future of the Internet.

The conference, “Online Journalism: From the Medium to the Message,” drew key players and thinkers from the Silicon Valley, San Francisco’s Multimedia Gulch, to the Pacific Northwest’s Silicon Forest and the East Coast’s Silicon Alley. Panelists included executives from Dow Jones & Co., Sun Microsystems, Salon, Wired News, CNET News.com, Xerox PARC, Talk City, Women.Com, Yahoo! and the deans of UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business, School of Information Management and Systems and the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School of Communication.

The participants struggled over how to deal with the still-murky division between advertisements and editorial content on the World Wide Web. They explored the many visions of the future of new media. And they discussed who will rule that new world.

“It’s not going to be like the 1950s when a handful of networks dominated everything,” said Chris Jennewein, vice president of technology and operations at San Jose’s Knight Ridder New Media Co., referring to the vigorous competition among online publications.

Many panelists agreed that Internet users’ “click and go” habits spur journalists and media corporations to gather, deliver and sell information quite differently than they used to.

“We’re asking people to pay for downloading PowerPoint slides of information that we’ve created ... you couldn’t do that with a newspaper,” said John Battelle, president of The Industry Standard, a weekly online magazine covering the Internet economy. “The whole industry is really moving to the point where you can start to charge very high prices to get the right message in front of readers who have given you information in lieu of paying you money.”

Some publications such as The Wall Street Journal, Nikkei and TheStreet.com have been successful in attracting subscribers who are willing to pay for online content.

“The facts, the data — credible, authoritative information — I think that’s going to have value,” said Hal Varian, dean of UC Berkeley’s School of Information Management and Systems and co-author of “Information Rules.” He said the new-media industry can construct a business model around providing valuable information that has an established brand name.

Panelists also wrestled with the frequent problems and conflicts of interest that surface when new-media professionals own a stake in the editorial products they generate. Most start-ups give their top executives — and often their entire staff — stock options in new-media ventures as part of their compensation packages.

“In new media, we are both owners and creators,” said David Weir, managing editor of Salon magazine. “It’s an equity culture. I am optimistic that doesn’t have to be contradictory.”

Some panelists such as CNET News.com’s Jai Singh suggested that the journalism industry establish hiring guidelines for online publications. Publications created by non-media organizations such as Microsoft can improve under such guidelines, he said. Singh expressed concern about the ethics of mixing editorial content with product news and advertising.

“What happens to a site when they have no people with journalism background?” asked Singh, editor of CNET News.com in San Francisco. “How do you deal with critical stories of a product when you sell it through your Web site?”