The Future of News Reporting

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 Panelists:

• Eric Beecher - Publisher, Crikey
  
• Gaven Morris - Head of Continuous News, ABC
  
• Mark Hollands - Chief Executive, PANPA 
• Sam North - Media Director, Ogilvy Public Relations 
• Stilgherrian - Writer
  

Moderated by Mark Jones - Director, Filtered Media

Mark Jones - Director, Filtered Media

Mark Jones is a speaker, journalist and technology strategist. He is a respected subject matter expert on enterprise technology, internet and social media trends. As an emcee, his impressive credentials combined with an energetic and warm personality immediately connects with audiences and gets rave reviews.

Mark is a former IT Editor of the Financial Review, and managing editor of the Financial Review's MIS Magazine Australia's leading magazine for CIOs and senior technology executives. He now hosts The Scoop podcast for the Financial Review's tv.afr.com and tv.misaustralia.com.

Since launching Filtered Media in April 2007, Mark has also advised and produced digital content such as podcasts, vodcasts, blogs and online content strategies and policies for some of Australia’s biggest companies.

Gaven Morris - Head of Continuous News, ABC

Gaven Morris is the ABC’s Head of Continuous News and thus has responsibility for the introduction of the ABC’s latest multi-channel offering, ABC News 24.

He has had a long career in Australia and internationally in broadcast news.

Gaven worked at the ABC as a reporter/producer for the 7.30 Report in the mid-90s.

He then moved overseas, holding senior editorial roles at CNN in London and helping establish Al Jazeera English in Doha, rising to the position of Head of Planning for that international television news service.

He returned to the ABC in 2008, filling the newly-created position of National Editor, Continuous News, supervising the ABC’s efforts to deliver news content 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

 

Eric Beecher - Publisher, Crikey

Eric Beecher started his career in newspapers as a journalist on The Age newspaper in Melbourne. He later worked at The Sunday Times and The Observer in London and The Washington Post in the US. In 1984, at age 33, he became the youngest-ever editor of the Sydney Morning Herald, and in 1987 was appointed editor-in-chief of the Herald and Weekly Times newspaper group. 

In 1990 he became a founder, CEO and major shareholder in The Text Media Group, a public company which produced newspapers, magazines and books, which was acquired by Fairfax Media in 2003. In 2003 he formed Private Media Partners, which acquired Crikey.com.au in 2005. 

Since then he has been a founding shareholder and chairman of three further online media ventures: SmartCompany.com.au, EurekaReport.com.au and BusinessSpectator.com.  He is also chairman of the Victorian Government’s Centre for Books, Writing and Ideas.  In 2000 he delivered the annual Andrew Olle Media Lecture and in 2007 was awarded the Walkley Award for Journalistic Leadership.

Mark Hollands - Chief Executive, PANPA

Mark Hollands is the Chief Executive of the Pacific Area Newspaper Publishers’ Association, representing the industry in the public domain on behalf of the major and independent newspaper publishers of Australia, New Zealand, the Pacific Islands and South-East Asia.

He has international business experience, having held senior management positions at two American companies, Dow Jones and the IT research and consulting company, Gartner. He is a former six-year board member of the Australia-Japan Foundation, an organisation established by the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade to support and improve bilateral relations.

A journalist initially, Mark Hollands has worked for several of the major publishers within the News Corporation portfolio. He was foreign editor at The Australian and the Herald & Weekly Times in Melbourne, and worked as a journalist in Hong Kong and Papua New Guinea for News Corp publications. He has also worked on The Times, Daily Mail and The Sun in London.

After a time as a Circulation Manager at News Ltd, Mark Hollands moved into the technology area. He was one of the early employees of the start-up ISP, OzEmail, took a role as IT Editor at The Australian and then became general manager of a dotcom, called Beenz, launching it in Australia and New Zealand. After the dotcom crash, Mark Hollands was appointed Vice-President of Gartner Asia-Pacific, where he worked for seven years before taking the role of Director Sales at Dow Jones.

Now running the newspaper industry association, Mark Hollands leads as organisation dedicated to elevating the professional standards of newspaper publishing in journalism, commercial activity, and production and print; lobbying on behalf of publishers, and enhancing inter-industry education and communication.

Sam North - Media Director, Ogilvy Public Relations

Sam North, former Managing Editor of the Sydney Morning Herald and Sun Herald, joined Ogilvy PR in the newly created role of Media Director in February 2009.
As Media Director, Sam provides senior counsel on media engagement, crisis and issues management, and leads media training programs.

Prior to joining Ogilvy, Sam had spent 32 years as a journalist at Fairfax, the last 20 at the Sydney Morning Herald. He held a number of senior roles as a writer, editor and manager, with his final four years being spent as the Managing Editor for the SMH and Sun-Herald. He spent a number of years as Fairfax’s representative on the Australian Press Council.

Before joining Fairfax, he worked as an on-camera reporter for television news.

Stilgherrian - Writer

Stilgherrian is writer, broadcaster and consultant based in Sydney, Australia. He covers the intersection of technology, politics and media for Crikey, ZDNet Australia, ABC Unleashed, newmatilda.com, his own website and others.

Stilgherrian presents ZDNet Australia’s podcast Patch Monday and his own The 9pm Edict, is a regular on the podcast A Series of Tubes, and produced audio programs for Telstra and IBM Asia-Pacific before the word “podcast” came into use.

An Internet user since the mid-1980s, his professional focus is on how new communication and collaboration technologies are changing the way we work, play, socialise and organise our societies.
Stilgherrian isn’t afraid to call a spade a spade. His style is mercurial, quick-wittedly flipping between playful and provocative. He’s sometimes offensive, often insightful, and always entertaining.
He’s also one of Australia’s most prolific and (according to NEWS.com.au) “interesting” users of the social messaging service Twitter.

Stilgherrian’s early life was shaped by a stark contrast: growing up poor on a dairy farm south of Adelaide but, thanks to a scholarship, attending an elite private school in the city, Prince Alfred College.

After studying computing science and linguistics at the University of Adelaide, Stilgherrian became a broadcaster, first with Radio 5UV (now Radio Adelaide) and then as a producer and presenter with ABC Radio. He built a loyal cult following in Adelaide’s dance music, techno and hip-hop scenes in the early 1990s as presenter of the Triple J program Club Escape and publisher of The CORE magazine before becoming station manager at community broadcaster Three D Radio.

He served on the boards of the AIDS Council of South Australia and the South Australian Community Broadcasters Association.

Stilgherrian moved to Sydney in 1995 and survived life in the chaotic start-ups of the first dot-com boom.

You can ask the panel questions or submit via twitter #futureforum

Social media has blurred the divide between journalist, blogger and citizen, or has it? Mainstream news websites now rely on reader photos, news tips, and comments to drive traffic. Bloggers have an unmistakeable voice. And journalists have (finally) discovered Twitter delivers news leads and more. But where's it all headed? Our panel on The Future of News reporting will discuss the following issues:

- Is citizen reporting gaining credibility, or is it an indulgence of the noisy minority?
- Is the 'passive massive' too attached to their couches to care about participation?
- The Twitter factor: Is live twitter commentary reinventing TV?
- The journalist/blogger/citizen reporter debate: what's really in a name? Is this journalist paranoia or
   a real revolution?
- Case studies: What can we learn from citizen journalism experiments in Australia and around the world?

The forum will run as a moderated question and answer session and will be broadcast live using Viocorp’s live stream technology, Viostream. An interactive chat feature will allow viewers to submit questions to the moderator throughout the broadcast. The content will also be available online here at the conclusion of the Forum.