May 10th and 12th
Consuming News in the Age of the Blog
Seattle Preview Forum 2005

News and information are critical in our daily lives, and critical to democracy. Today there are more news sources than ever before — newspapers, community papers, network and cable TV, radio, listservs, millions of websites, and for some, news headlines sent directly to cells phones and PDAs.

How do we get the news we need when there are so many sources and so much “spin”?

The Forum at the Evans School and Washington News Council hosted two working sessions with news professionals, bloggers, and community members.

Stephen Silha, co-author of Good News, Good Deeds , and Cindy Zehnder, president of TVW, moderated the discussions.

The Seattle Preview Forum is co-sponsored by CityClub, Town Hall Seattle, and the Civic Engagement Project. For more information online go to www.evansforum.org.

For more information on the national project visit the Preview Forum website at www.previewforum.org .

Here are some good background pieces you may find helpful:

NEWSPAPERS MUST CHANGE -- Rupert Murdoch's April 13 speech to American Society of Newspaper Editors: http://www.newscorp.com/news/news_247.html OR http://www.asne.org/index.cfm?ID=5707 (summary)

NEWSPAPERS CAN BE SAVED – Leonard Downie's April 19 speech at University of Kentucky: http://poynter.org/forum/default.asp?id=misc&DGPCrSrt=&DGPCrPg=1

ABANDONING THE NEWS – Merrill Brown's spring 2005 Carnegie report on young people and the news media: http://www.carnegie.org/reporter/10/news/index.html

JOURNALISM AND BLOGGING -- Bill Mitchell and Bob Steele of Poynter Institute's January report for Harvard conference on media and blogs: http://www.poynter.org/content/content_view.asp?id=78158&sid=32

NEWSPAPERS ARE SLOWLY DYING – Jay Rosen of PressThink on the future of newspapers and other news media: http://journalism.nyu.edu/pubzone/weblogs/pressthink/2005/03/29/nwsp.
dwn.html

TALK RADIO IN BEGINNING OF DECLINE? DO WE BLAME BLOGS?
http://www.bizzyblog.com/?p=134