Speaker: Professor Jane B. Singer

The age of the Internet in general, and the past decade in particular, has been a period of arguably unprecedented disruption for journalists and the organizations that employ them. As profound and interconnected changes in news technologies, economics and audiences have rocked the media industry,  journalists’ ideas about their social role and the practitioner ethics that they see as safeguarding that role seem to have become increasingly entrenched. Yet their employers, after years of hesitant, incremental and largely imitative responses to upheaval, now are placing bets on quite diverse ways forward. For both individuals and news organizations, successfully navigating the path between continuity and change remains difficult – and vital.

Jane B. Singer is Professor of Journalism Innovation in the Department of Journalism at City University London. Her research explores digital journalism, including changing roles, perceptions, norms, and practices. She worked as a US newspaper journalist before becoming the first news manager of Prodigy Interactive Services, the first national online news service in America. She holds a PhD in journalism from the University of Missouri and an MA in liberal studies from New York University; previous academic appointments have been at the University of Iowa and Colorado State University in the US, and the University of Central Lancashire in the UK. Jane is editor of the forthcoming International Encyclopedia of Journalism Studies, to be published by Wiley-Blackwell. She is co-author of Participatory Journalism (2011, Wiley-Blackwell) and Online Journalism Ethics (2007, M.E. Sharpe), along with more than 60 journal articles and book chapters