MEDIA ADVISORY: Yale Law School Conference Nov. 13-14 on the Future of Journalism

Journalists are invited to explore and report on the future of their own industry at a conference at Yale Law School on November 13 and 14, titled “Journalism and the New Media Ecology: Who Will Pay the Messengers?”

At the two-day conference, scholars, media leaders, journalists, faculty members and students will examine the future of journalism and explore new ways to support the work of the “Fourth Estate.” The event is sponsored by Yale Law School’s Knight Law and Media Program and the Information Society Project.

Panels will consider such topics as “Who Uses the News and How?,” “Preserving Local Journalism” and “Who Will Pay the Messengers?” Additional sessions will delve into “The Quest for Pay Models,” “Publicly Owned and Operated Media,” “The Changing Ecology of News Media,” “Non-Profit and Foundation-Funded Models” and “Direct and Indirect Government Subsidies.” The final panel discussion will consider “The View from the Newsroom.”

Speakers include Stephen Brill, co-founder of “Journalism Online” and founding editor of American Lawyer; Jay Rosen, author of “What Are Journalists For?” (Yale University Press, 1999) and PressThink, a weblog about journalism and its ordeals (www.pressthink.org); Susan DeSanti, director of policy planning at the Federal Trade Commission; Tom Rosenstiel, director of the Pew Center for Excellence in Journalism; and many others.

The conference begins at 10 a.m. on Friday with welcoming remarks by Yale Law School Dean Robert Post ’77 J.D. and Professor Jack Balkin, director of the Knight Law and Media Program. Jonathan Klein, president of CNN-USA, will deliver the keynote address on Friday evening to an invited audience. The conference concludes Saturday afternoon.

All sessions of the conference are open to coverage by the news media, including the dinner. All events will take place at the Law School, located at 127 Wall Street, New Haven, with the exception of the dinner and keynote on Friday evening. The latter will be held at The Study Hotel at Yale, 1157 Chapel Street, New Haven. Those wishing to cover the event should contact Perry Fetterman at perry.fetterman@yale.edu.

Details and the complete conference schedule are available at www.law.yale.edu/lawandmedia.