Symposium to focus on public media, education

Experts will focus on the growing influence of public radio and television media in the digital age at a University of Colorado Boulder symposium, which is free and open to the public, March 13-14.

Journalism and Mass Communication at CU-Boulder is sponsoring “The Content and Context of Digital Culture.” The symposium will be held at various sites across campus and a complete schedule is available at http://icjmtsymposium.org/schedule.

“Public media have become leaders, both locally and nationally, in the convergence of multiple platforms for delivering news and opinion in the digital age,” said symposium organizer Andrew Calabrese, a professor of journalism and mass communication.

In some cases, that expansion includes reaching out to the community both as an audience and as content creators, said Calabrese.

Among the speakers will be Jessica Clark, a scholar in residence at the American University’s School of Communication and a Knight Fellow in media policy. She is spearheading a Washington, D.C. experiment called “The Public Media Corps,” which places young people into schools, media outlets and community centers to collaborate on media projects. Wick Rowland, Colorado Public Television CEO, and Michael Tracey, an author and CU-Boulder professor of journalism and mass communication, will join Clark from 5:15 to 6:45 p.m. March 13 in room 150 of the Eaton Humanities Building.

From 11 a.m. to noon March 14 in the Old Main Chapel, public media expert Barbara Cochran will offer her view of how public media can become more local and interactive with their communities. Cochran is a professor and the Curtis B. Hurley chair in public affairs reporting at the University of Missouri.

A portion of the symposium will focus on the creative industries’ influence on university research and teaching. Speaker Terry Flew is a professor of media and communication at the Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane, Australia, and an expert on innovations in digital media. Also scheduled to speak on the subject of creativity and “design thinking” across all disciplines is Warren Berger, author of the influential book, “Glimmer: How Design Can Transform Your Life, and Maybe Even the World.”

The symposium runs in conjunction with an effort to create a new interdisciplinary school or college at CU-Boulder that may include studies in communication, technology, multimedia journalism, commercial design and the digital arts and humanities. The effort is called the Information, Communication, Journalism, Media and Technology, or ICJMT, initiative.

CU Journalism and Mass Communication is sponsoring the symposium in support of the ICJMT initiative, with additional support from the Advertising A2B certificate program.

For more information including speakers and event locations visit http://www.icjmtsymposium.org/.