Mark your calendars: ISOJ will celebrate its 25th anniversary in April 2024 with a special global hybrid conference

The International Symposium on Online Journalism (ISOJ) will celebrate 25 years of discussions on the present and future of digital journalism on April 12 – 13, 2024.

Since 1999, this unique hybrid annual conference has brought together hundreds of journalists, media executives, scholars and students both online and in person at the University of Texas at Austin. It is a program of the Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas at the Moody College of Communication.

“We are heading for a very special celebration next year with the 25th ISOJ,” said professor Rosental Alves, the founder and organizer of the symposium. “When we had our first conference in April 1999, with no more that 80 people in attendance, I could not imagine that ISOJ would become such a big and important global event.”

More than 1,100 participants from around the world gathered online and in Austin for ISOJ 2023. At least 380 people from 29 countries attended the symposium in Austin, and 809 people from 89 countries participated online.

The symposium featured 76 speakers from 18 countries and 20 hours of programming. Keynote speakers included Joseph Kahn, executive editor at The New York Times; Janelle Rodriguez, executive vice president, NBC News; Jon Kelly, co-founder and editor-in-chief of Puck; and Yusuf Omar, co-founder of Seen.tv (based in Australia and several other countries).

The 25th anniversary of ISOJ means even more collaboration and innovation for attendees. We’re planning interesting ways for ISOJers to network and exchange ideas with one another.

Professor Alves began ISOJ in 1999 as a small, intense one-day conference that focused on the United States. Over the years, it has grown into a unique event that serves as a barometer for the state of online journalism globally. Part of what makes ISOJ special is the collaboration with academia through research panels and #ISOJ, the symposium’s official peer-reviewed journal.

“We have already secured the splendid Zlotnik Family Ballroom at the AT&T Conference Center on the campus of the University of Texas at Austin as the venue for the in-person component of the 25th ISOJ,” Alves said. “We are also working on more innovative ways to secure engagement and full participation for remote attendees, as we have done in recent years. It’s been more than video streaming.”

As is tradition, the 17th Ibero-American Colloquium on Digital Journalism will be held on Sunday, April 14, following ISOJ. This annual gathering, which is held in Spanish, brings together journalists from Latin America, Spain and Portugal who attended ISOJ to discuss online journalism in the region.

Find out more about ISOJ at isoj.org, where you can browse transcripts, video, photos, news stories and more from all symposia dating back to 1999. And watch our social media accounts on Twitter and Facebook for more updates about the 25th ISOJ!

We can’t wait to see you for all the fun in Austin, Texas from April 12 – 13, 2024!