My notes from the International Journalism Festival would have worked better as tweets, both for immediacy and because they were a bit disjointed.
Wifi at the conference was spotty and I was able to livetweet only for Margaret Sullivan‘s keynote address on Saturday.
In addition, more than once, I’ve joined a session early or ducked out late, either because of appointments to meet fellow panelists or other friends or because I wanted to see overlapping panels. So in several cases, my notes cover only parts of sessions (the best parts, I hope). But I enjoyed each session, so I’ll share my disjointed notes here, starting with some tweets from the Sullivan keynote:
Just found this caught in drafts: #ijf14 has the coolest venues of any journalism conference. @Sulliview pic.twitter.com/kJPfXoHKil
— Steve Buttry (@stevebuttry) May 3, 2014
.@Sulliview tells what she’s learned from front-row seat on changes in journalism. #ijf14 pic.twitter.com/Bn98No6ITx
— Steve Buttry (@stevebuttry) May 3, 2014
.@Sulliview “stopped being part of the old guard,” inspired by Bob Dylan & @cshirky. #ijf14
— Steve Buttry (@stevebuttry) May 3, 2014
The 2009 Clay Shirky post that inspired Sullivan to join Twitter and become a more aggressive part of the digital revolution was Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable. I posted on the Shirky post at the time.
Nimble journo startups are as different from newspapers as streaming House of Cards on iPad is from old theaters. @Sulliview #ijf14
— Steve Buttry (@stevebuttry) May 3, 2014
.@Sulliview: “As a journalist you are not for sale.” Integrity is paramount. #ijf14
— Steve Buttry (@stevebuttry) May 3, 2014
.@Sulliview advice on avoiding plagiarism: Always credit. #ijf14 #iMy addition: And link, if source is digital.
— Steve Buttry (@stevebuttry) May 3, 2014
We need to be clear & honest about what we know, what we don’t know & about our mistakes, @Sulliview says. #ijf14
— Steve Buttry (@stevebuttry) May 3, 2014
“Fast is good but right is better,” @Sulliview says. Once trust is gone, it’s hard to earn it back. #ijf14
— Steve Buttry (@stevebuttry) May 3, 2014
.@Sulliview examined coverage after @nytimes dismantling environmental team & Green Blog. Times had less coverage of climate change.
— Steve Buttry (@stevebuttry) May 3, 2014
Wearing #ijf14 Amazon lanyard, @Sulliview discusses Jeff Bezos purchase of WaPo from Graham family.
— Steve Buttry (@stevebuttry) May 3, 2014
Going to J-school isn’t an absolute necessity, but training or teaching in ethics is important, @Sulliview says. #ijf14
— Steve Buttry (@stevebuttry) May 3, 2014
Criticism on Twitter can be tough for journos, but it also calls attention to mistakes so we can correct quickly, @Sulliview says. #ijf14
— Steve Buttry (@stevebuttry) May 3, 2014
As public editor, @Sulliview finds the @nytimes is usually excellent, “but being excellent doesn’t translate to being perfect.” #ijf14
— Steve Buttry (@stevebuttry) May 3, 2014
Some points that stood out from the panels, or segments of panels that I attended:
The Snowden effect
In a panel on how the Edward Snowden story and how it has affected journalism, James Ball of the Guardian (which broke the Snowden story) said security has become critically important to journalists now. Before Snowden, he said, security was something a single reporter warned skeptical editors about to a situation where every Guardian reporter has encryption software, as well as most reporters.
If you’re not encrypting your communications, Ball said, “It’s incredibly easy to sell out a source without even knowing you’ve done it.”
Andy Carvin said his orientation at First Look Media started with a primer in PGP encryption software and other security tutorials.
Dan Gillmor warned that smartphones have become “spying devices as much as they are communication devices.” The public, he said, needs to be willing to trade some of the convenience it enjoys if people want to take back some control from governments and corporations that control information.
Jillian York of the Electronic Frontier Foundation warned that “self-censorship of ideas” by writers seeking to avoid triggering surveillance is as grave a situation as actual censorship.
Felix Salmon
Felix Salmon gave an interesting history of the digital age. It was fascinating, given how resistant both Poynter and the Society of Professional Journalists have been to addressing linking in their updates of ethical standards, how important linking was in Salmon’s view of Internet development.
“The fundamental thing that you do on the Internet is link to things,” Salmon said.
Without links, he said, initial newspaper websites were just “taking a printed newspaper and making it harder to read by putting it online.”
Speaking of the daily demand of filling a newspaper, Salmon said, “You wind up on this hamster wheel of producing vast amounts of content just because you have these vast amounts of space to fill.”
It was an interesting echo of Dean Starkman’s bemoaning of the “hamster wheel” in digital journalism. Journalism has always been a busy, repetitive business. I guess the hamster wheel is a handy metaphor from any perspective.
With the ability to provide deep linking into archived information on a topic, Salmon said, the user can “choose your own depth: the digital version of the inverted pyramid.”
Where are the women?
Lucy Marcus gave a good way to tell whether your writing is sexist: If it would seem silly to change the gender to male in a context, the reference to a woman is sexist. For instance, you’d never read a headline that a grandfather was taking the reins of a Fortune 500 company.
Sullivan said since Jill Abramson became the first woman editor of the New York Times, more of the Times’ top editors have become women.
Marcus, a board chair who writes a column and hosts a TV show “In the Boardroom,” said too few corporate directors are women, and she doesn’t buy excuses that it is difficult to find qualified women. “Get back to me when we have as many mediocre women on boards as we have mediocre men.”
Sullivan, former editor of the Buffalo News, said she observed that women were reluctant to ask for pay raises.
Jo Webster of Reuters encouraged women to take on “stretch projects” that will give them new experiences and be willing to move horizontally to learn new skills.”
Marcus said journalists too often pigeonhole women experts as experts only in women’s issues. “I’m not an expert on women in the boardroom. I’m an expert on the boardroom.”
YouTube, Google+ and hangouts for journalists
Google’s Nicholas Whitaker led a session on using Google+ Hangouts and livestreaming through YouTube.
I think journalists need to make better use of Hangout and its livestreaming potential. You can learn more about it at Google’s Media Tools page, including the Q&A app that lets people who aren’t on the Hangout ask questions, a Control Room app that lets you direct a show more effectively and a Toolbox app that lets you do such things as add “lower-third” labels to the screen.
I found his advice about sharing links to your Hangouts an interesting affirmation of what everyone knows is Google’s place in social media: “Share over Twitter, Facebook, Google+ …”
Thanks
This is my second year at the International Journalism Festival. It would be one of my favorite events, even if it weren’t held on a beautiful hilltop location in Perugia, Italy, with fabulous restaurants.
Congratulations to Arianna Ciccone and Christopher Potter for successfully crowdfunding this year’s festival. I hope they can secure funding for an eighth festival in 2015.
Reblogged this on malfisahrin12.
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[…] Commentary on this topic by women has been better than the commentary by men (which makes me reluctant to comment). I especially commend to your attention the pieces by Susan Glasser, Rachel Sklar, Rebecca Traister, Geneva Overholser, Ann Friedman and Times Public Editor Margaret Sullivan. Just last Monday, Sullivan blogged about the impact Abramson has had in promoting and recruiting women to top leadership jobs at the Times. She was blogging about a panel at the International Journalism Festival that I attended and mentioned in a blog post. […]
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