Talks on future of news in NZ + live storytelling

The future of journalism in New Zealand

There’s a lunchtime series of talks coming up about the future of ‘serious journalism’ in New Zealand that looks interesting.

Organised by the University of Auckland, the talks will run each Tuesday lunchtime (1pm) from July 20 to August 24 at the Maidment Theatre in Auckland.

The topics include whether successful ‘fake’ news shows like The Daily Show and The Colbert Report are good or bad for democracy, the history of journalism and what that might tell us about its future, citizens as news gatekeepers, Maori presence in news stories and politics as comedy.

They all look interesting and I’m going to try to make a few of them despite not being a resident of Auckland.

Of particular interest to me is the session with Gavin Ellis, former editor in chief of the New Zealand Herald, who will draw on his doctoral research to talk about the structures that deliver public interest journalism and how they have been and might be funded. I’ve spoken to him briefly about his research a couple of times and have been looking forward to hearing more about it.

Here’s a pdf of the flyer outlining the talks in more detail.

And here’s the press release:

JOURNALISM’S FUTURE AT STAKE

Is serious journalism dying? Was it in any good it the first place?
What must be done to ensure its survival?

These are some of the questions to be tackled at The University of Auckland’s forthcoming Winter Lecture series on “The end(s) of journalism”.

The six-lecture series will examine the decline in serious journalism brought about by digital convergence, media proliferation, fragmented audiences and the global recession.

It will look at the long-term implications of these developments, given how vital the media are to democratic deliberation. Alternative technological possibilities, programming forms and funding alternatives will be canvassed.

Academics from the University’s Departments of Political Studies, Film, Television and Media Studies, and Māori Studies will present the lectures along with Colin Peacock, presenter of Mediawatch on Radio New Zealand National and Gavin Ellis, former editor-in-chief of the New Zealand Herald.

The lunchtime series begins on 20 July with a lecture illuminating journalism’s present predicament and prospects by returning to its roots. Subsequent lectures will consider the current state of New Zealand journalism, the Māori presence in media stories, citizen journalism on the internet, news satire, and the near-term future of serious journalism.

“The media in forms old and new affect everyone, and play a key role in supporting democratic purposes,” says series organiser, Dr Joe Atkinson. “This is a timely series in a period of extreme upheaval for traditional media and the lectures will be of wide general interest.”

Event: 2010 Winter Lectures at The University of Auckland on “The end(s) of journalism”
Dates:Six successive Tuesdays from 20 July to 24 August
Time: 1pm
Venue: Maidment Theatre, 8 Alfred Street.
Further information: www.auckland.ac.nz/winter, phone 373 7599 ext 87698

Live storytelling

Also in my inbox this morning was an invite to True Stories Told Live, a Book Council event on this Sunday, July 4,4pm, at TAPAC Motions Road (opposite the Zoo) in Auckland ($10).

It’s billed this way: Seven people, seven stories, straight up, unscripted, live and unrehearsed.  An ex-nun, a celebrant, an acclaimed short story writer, a biographer,  theatre director, scholar and physiotherapist will get up in a room in front of an audience and tell a story. It could be anything, but something with a beginning, a middle and an end and it sort of needs to be true…  It’s about attempting to bring back the oral tradition.

Which reminded me of this:

Performance Journalism

This is an excerpt from a Boing Boing post (via @gnat) about Pop-Up Magazine:

The San Francisco event they’ve invented…is a stage show aimed to bring the best of magazines into “the medium of live,” as Editor-in-Chief Doug McGray told me. Pop-Up’s got a masthead and table of contents, shorts, features, even integrated ads, and many of the contributors make their livings through words and images on the page (there are also film-makers and radio producers). There they all were, behind not laptops but a podium, spot-lit and performing.

Here are a couple of things the writer, Elizabeth Soep, said stood out:

• Urgency: The show sold out in minutes. And then there was an after-party that required special tickets of its own. I felt myself getting physically riled up booking my own tickets, as each little “available seat” icon blinked off before my eyes. Hate to say it, but that kind of flurry changes the way you think about an evening of journalism.

• Ephemerality: It’s live, as in, no digital record. There’s novelty now in content that’s over and gone once it’s done its thing.

• Spontaneity: There was this moment early in the show when the writer Jennifer Kahn was wrapping up her story about her 80-something-year-old dad’s unlikely ascent in competitive weightlifting. When a home-video clip of his win ended, the man himself strolled onto the stage, trophy raised. It was pretty awesome, that unexpected shift from media to live.

• Draftiness: Pop-Up is unrehearsed. Many of its segments are built around bits and pieces of things that either aren’t finished or didn’t make a final cut. Like Josh Harkinson’s photo presentation of his canoe trip through a hideously polluted Texas waterway. He closed by saying he’d pitched the story to Outside Magazine and they said no, they don’t do stories like that. Moments like that one give live-audience “readers” a feeling that they’re in on a process that otherwise only happens behind closed doors.