Enthusiasm and dynamic, focused discussions marked last week’s Online News Association09 Conference and Awards Ceremony in San Francisco, in sharp contrast to other gatherings of journalists that I have attended this year. One might say it almost seemed like “irrational exuberance.”

This week, I read with interest Henry Jenkins’ recent blog post featuring text from interview that he had done with Eric Klinenberg, professor of sociology at New York University and author of “Fighting for Air:The Battle to Control America’s Media.”

Working in Prague on July 4th with college students on a cross-cultural multimedia project, I think about the future of journalism in the United States.  The aspirations of our Founding Fathers were encoded in key documents like the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights. Among our cherished freedoms, articulated in the [...]

Thinking about business models issues involving media companies, I am struck by the continuing reliance on advertising as the fundamental funding mechanism. Also, I am struck by the seeming reluctance to examine some of the fundamental premises behind advertising itself as a revenue source. Often, advertising seems designed to facilitate consumption as its principal point [...]

The international reaction to the video that circulated last weekend showing the murder of Neda Agha-Soltan, point to the challenges and realities facing the the practice of journalism in the Internet Age. Bill Mitchell , Leader of News Transformations at the Poynter Institute, a journalism think tank in St. Petersburg, Fla., wrote an excellent article [...]

Yesterday, I was conducting a live chat on behalf of knowledgewebb.net on visual journalism topics when I got this question from a student.  “Should I continue to take courses in photojournalism or switch my major now?”   The follow up question was something to the effect with all that is going on now economically “… [...]

This past weekend, Susan Boyle competed in the finals of Britain’s Got Talent and came in second ultimately to the street dance troupe Diversity, despite winning the hearts of judges Piers Morgan, Amanda Holden, and Simon Cowell.  Her lifelong interest in singing led up to her decision  to enter the competition, leaving the tiny Scotland village of [...]