Technology, Community, and the Future of Journalism
Hosted by Illinois Humanities
Before the advent of the World Wide Web, local bulletin board systems (BBSes) anticipated many contemporary aspects of the Internet, including social networking and the dissemination of news. In 1982, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram and the Tandy Corporation launched StarText. The original iteration of the BBS (initially available as a $5/month subscription) included daily news updates from 5 AM to midnight. It endured into the dot-com era before closing in 1997.
By now, it’s become a commonplace that the media landscape is rapidly changing: countless studies confirm the ascendancy of digital over print, declining profit margins at legacy news organizations, and the increasing importance of social media as a primary portal to news.
Illinois Humanities, in partnership with local and national media leaders, will organize and sponsor a keynote lecture and one-day conference that aim to take stock of these changes and their implications for the profession and for the role of journalism in a democratic society. In addition to panel presentations and workshops, the conference will feature three media projects in open beta, selected and produced through an online competition.