Monday April 4, 2005
12:30 – 1:30 p.m.
Room 180
Free and Open to all!
Lunch Served
The opportunities abound for a new and vibrant kind of "citizen's media" --
weblogs, podcasting, video and more -- but the law may thwart this
democratization. In particular, copyright to defamation may become barriers
to the most important shift in media power in generations. Do we need better
defenses, better laws, or both? Dan Gillmor is author of "We the Media: Grassroots Journalism by the
People, for the People" (O'Reilly Media, 2004), a book that explains the
rise of citizens' media and why it matters. He is working on a project
(dangillmor.typepad.com) to enable and expand the reach of grassroots
journalism.
From 1994-2004, Gillmor was a columnist at the San Jose Mercury News,
Silicon Valley's daily newspaper, and wrote a weblog for SiliconValley.com.
He joined the Mercury News after six years with the Detroit Free Press.
Before that, he was with the Kansas City Times and several newspapers in
Vermont. A Phi Beta Kappa graduate of the University of Vermont, Gillmor
received a Herbert Davenport fellowship in 1982 for economics and business
reporting at the University of Missouri School of Journalism. During the
1986-87 academic year he was a journalism fellow at the University of
Michigan in Ann Arbor, where he studied history, political theory and
economics. He has won or shared in several regional and national journalism
awards.
Before becoming a journalist he played music professionally for seven
years.