Disrupting The News Industry: Media Concentration And Participatory Journalism

Released just over a month ago, the video recording of this April 2004 seminar held at UC Berkeley, provides some very interesting insight and commentary by a panel of qualified experts of traditional and online journalism: Neil Chase, managing editor of CBS MarketWatch, Vin Crosbie of Digital Deliverance LLC media consulting firm, Dan Gillmor, columnist for the San Jose Mercury News and author of the forthcoming book "We the Media", Ken Sands, managing editor of online and new media at The Spokane Spokesman-Review. Focus is on the state of online journalism and the issues surrounding the concentration of media power in very few hands versus the abilities and new patterns emerging from the opposite side: independents, small publishers, smart newspapers and community publishing. Dan Gillmor is in perfect synch with the cutting edge and gets it all. Neil Chase has som every interesting stories to tell and his outfit is certainly a model to look after. Ken Sands has tested many effective ideas online and being out there with a small publishing ship at his command he has indeed good stories to share to. But it is Vin Crosbie who surprised me the most, as his analysis and vision showcased blatantly the influence of too much corporate media serving and the typical myopia of those with a too long traditional publishing background. The event is moderated by Bob Magnuson, lecturer at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism and former CEO of InfoWorld. If you have an ADSL, DSL, cable or broadband connection to the Internet, this audio-video recording is worth all of its minutes. (Quicktime streaming format).