Knight Center launches program for ISOJ 2016, the global conference on online journalism


The Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas has released the program for the 17th International Symposium on Online Journalism (ISOJ), an annual conference that attracts media executives, journalists and scholars from around the world.

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Simultaneous translation to Spanish will be provided thanks to Univision. Explore the full program for this year’s conference here. Registration is now closed, but live streaming of the event in English and Spanish will be available.

Keynote speakers include Kinsey Wilson, editor for innovation and strategy and executive vice president for product and technology at The New York Times; Yoani Sánchez, founder and director for the Cuban digital news site 14ymedio; and Kara Swisher, co-founder and executive editor of the technology news site Re/code.

The conference will feature a special keynote panel with CEOs from five of the most successful and important nonprofit journalism organizations in the United States. They will discuss strategies for sustainability and the increasingly important role of nonprofit journalism in the U.S. media landscape. The panel will feature Joaquin Alvarado from Reveal/Center for Investigative Reporting, Peter Bale from the Center for Public Integrity, Bill Keller from The Marshall Project, Evan Smith of The Texas Tribune and Richard Tofel from ProPublica.

ISOJ also features panels on news bots, virtual reality, activism and journalism, women entrepreneurs, distributed content, advertising and ad blocking, the state of online journalism around the world and academic research on the industry. Additionally, Google News Lab will present a workshop on how journalists can use Google Tools to their advantage.

“We did it again,” said professor Rosental Calmon Alves, founder and director of the Knight Center, who created ISOJ in 1999. “We have put together again a very strong program to maintain ISOJ’s tradition of anticipating trends and discussing some of the most important issues of the moment in the struggle of journalism to adapt to the digital era.”

Before ISOJ starts on April 15, there will be two events open to participants (registration is required for both). On Thursday, April 14, Amanda Zamora, senior engagement editor for ProPublica, and the Engaging News Project of the Moody College of Communication will lead a daylong workshop on techniques for improving engagement with readers. Also on Thursday, Hacks/Hackers Connect will host startup jumpstart sessions, “Lean Canvas” work sprints and mentoring sessions.

The 9th Iberian American Colloquium on Digital Journalism will take place on Sunday, April 19, following ISOJ. The event features a round-table discussion in Spanish about online journalism trends in Latin America, Spain and Portugal. The event is free for ISOJ attendees, but seats are limited and registration is required.

The conference is supported by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, Open Society Foundations, Google, Dallas Morning News, Moody College of Communication and Univision News. It will take place from April 15 to 16, 2016 at the University of Texas at Austin’s Blanton Museum of Art at 200 E. Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd. in Austin, Texas.