Philip Napoli: What audiences want from news

“The news industry ‘has gone for years without needing to examine who its audience is or what they want,’ according to McClatchy’s Damon Kiesow, and digital-savvy readers have different expectations than their predecessors. So one of the key tasks for news outlets is first to develop better understandings of their own audiences: how those audiences…

Breakout session: Currents in technology

1:30 p.m.-3 p.m. Thursday, April 28 Disruption in the media industry, as reflected in rapidly changing business models and news gathering and distribution practices, has been significantly driven by the breakneck pace of technological advances. Alex Watson (Telegraph Media Group) and Retha Hill (Arizona State University) lead a discussion on how emerging technologies have shaped their work and their…

Breakout session: Shifting audiences

1:30 p.m.-3 p.m. Thursday, April 28 Media scholars Kim Schrøder (Roskilde University) and Philip Napoli (Rutgers University) lead this discussion on journalism’s relationship with what Jay Rosen (2006) famously called “the people formerly known as the audience.” They will explore how the Internet and emerging technologies continue to transform conceptions about the news audience and how it interacts with journalism content. As principal investigator for…

Public lecture: The audience revolution

9:30 a.m.-11:30 a.m. Thursday, April 28 Over the past decade, technology has driven profound structural changes in news audience behaviours, as people consume information about current events in a wide-ranging variety of places and forms. These changing behaviours precipitate changes in production and distribution of news, with journalists and others collaborating in the news-production process…

Breakout session: Innovations in education

1:30 p.m.-3 p.m. Thursday, April 28 As a function of new conceptions of the audience and the importance of technology (as above) journalists’ work functions are no longer covered by descriptors such as reporter, editor and producer; today’s range of job titles include product manager, audience developer, communities editor, and web/mobile developer.  Carrie Brown (City…

Closing plenary: The j-school value proposition

3 p.m.-4:30 p.m. Thursday, April 28 In the wake of the day’s discussions,  Carrie Brown (City University of New York) and Rich Gordon (Northwestern University) begin the session with reflections on how transformation in news consumption and technological and educational innovation are changing the way we think – or ought to think – about the future of journalism education.…