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On November 20, 2008, CJR and Consumer Reports staged a conference called "Consumer Revolution on the Web: Opportunities and Dangers for Journalism." The conference was designed to address questions about how professional journalists should cover consumer issues at a time when big-name bloggers, online vigilantes, and anonymous user-reviewers have turned word-of-mouth into a powerful weapon and traditional consumer reporters are falling victim to budget cuts. CJR publisher Evan Cornog moderated a panel discussion on the relative merits of citizen and professional journalism. Sitting on the panel were CUNY professor Jeff Jarvis and veteran New York Times reporter John Darnton. Audio of the panel is available here.

On November 20, 2008, CJR and Consumer Reports staged a conference called "Consumer Revolution on the Web: Opportunities and Dangers for Journalism." The conference was designed to address questions about how professional journalists should cover consumer issues at a time when big-name bloggers, online vigilantes, and anonymous user-reviewers have turned word-of-mouth into a powerful weapon and traditional consumer reporters are falling victim to budget cuts. Consumer Reports editorial director Kevin McKean moderated a panel discussion on how to strike a balance between professional and amateur consumer reporting. Sitting on the panel were veteran consumer reporter Trudy Lieberman, On the Media host Bob Garfield, The Consumerist editor Ben Popken, Pulitzer-winning reporter David Cay Johnston, and Harry McCracken, editor of Technologizer. Audio of the panel is available here.

On November 20, 2008, CJR and Consumer Reports staged a conference called "Consumer Revolution on the Web: Opportunities and Dangers for Journalism." The conference was designed to address questions about how professional journalists should cover consumer issues at a time when big-name bloggers, online vigilantes, and anonymous user-reviewers have turned word-of-mouth into a powerful weapon and traditional consumer reporters are falling victim to budget cuts. New York Times columnist David Pogue delivered the keynote address, in which he discussed the rise of user-generated consumer reporting on the Web. Audio of his speech is available here.

On November 19, The New Yorker's Jane Mayer and The New York Times's Andrew C. Revkin were presented with the John Chancellor Award for Excellence in Journalism and spoke at Columbia's Graduate School of Journalism.

Mayer was honored for her reporting on the use of torture by the Bush administration. (Two examples of her excellent work can be seen here and here.) Revkin was awarded for his coverage of climate change. (In addition to his Times articles, he also runs the lively and informative Dot Earth Blog.

In her talk, Mayer emphasized the importance of developing strong relationships with sources and finding innovative strategies for reporting on topics shrouded in secrecy. For his part, Revkin encouraged journalists to think of scientific knowledge as an advancing and evolving set of ideas.

Listen to the full lecture here.

On Tuesday, November 11, Columbia's Journalism School convened its annual "Changing Media Landscape" panel to discuss the current state of the news media and the direction it will take in the future. Participants--Sewell Chan, editor of The New York Times's City Room blog; Jacob Weisberg, chairman of Slate; Erica Smith, news designer of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and the Paper Cuts blog; Adriano Farano, executive editor of CafeBabel.com; and David Cohn, founder of the crowd-funding investigative platform Spot.us--found both reasons to be hopeful and reasons to be vigilant.

One reason to be vigilant, according to Weisberg: "New media and the traditional media are diverging rapidly after a period of peaceful coexistence,” he said. “We are moving into a conflict model.”

One reason to be hopeful, though, is that conflict often leads to innovation. “Finally, experimentation is being embraced,” Cohn said. “We should think of it as research and development; journalism will survive on the shoulders of its failures.”

Listen to the discussion here.

Nowhere in the Americas is it more dangerous to practice journalism than in Mexico. According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, twenty-one journalists have been killed in Mexico since 2000, seven of them in direct reprisal for their work. Those deaths, and the many other assaults that are a constant threat to Mexican journalists, mirror a rising trend of drug-related violence in the country.

Earlier this month, Columbia's Journalism School hosted a conference, “Scared Silent: Mexican Journalists Under Attack by Drug Mafias,” to foster awareness of the threat Mexican journalists face in their work and to increase cooperation among those who are trying to aid them. Sponsored by the Knight Foundation, the conference brought many journalists to Columbia University from Mexico to provide a safe venue for discussion and to meet their U.S. counterparts.

Delivering the keynote address at that event was Alejandro Junco de la Vega, president of Grupo Reforma, which publishes seven daily papers in Mexico, among them outlets in Mexico's three largest cities: Mexico City (Reforma), Guadalajara (Mural) and Monterrey (El Norte). The publishing conglomerate, and its president, have been instrumental factors in the evolution of journalism in Mexico. And the powerful speech Junco delivered highlighted not only the many challenges Mexico's press faces, but also his abiding faith in the power of truth to effect change.

You can listen to audio of the speech here.

Radio producer David Isay is the founder and executive director of the StoryCorps project, which collects and preserves oral American oral histories.

On August 20, Isay spoke at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism about the beauty of stories, the art of the interview, and power of listening.

An audio file of the talk is available here.

Shankar Vedantam writes the Department of Human Behavior column at the Washington Post.

On August 14, he spoke at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism about why reporters may not be aware of their hidden biases, and the role that such preconceptions may play in covering presidential elections. Vedantam refers to several psychology experiments that help his audience discover their own biases.

An audio file of the talk is available here.